


And The Moon Doth Shake

by MzMinola



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Argent family dynamics, Minor Character Death, friends interrupting each other's coping mechanisms, unconscious self harm, voluntary confinement
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-12
Updated: 2013-05-26
Packaged: 2017-12-11 14:41:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 20
Words: 60,530
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/799860
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/MzMinola/pseuds/MzMinola
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Scott was never bitten. Allison was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> While this is an AU, both major and minor character deaths are canon-compliant.  
> Much thanks to my betas [C](http://c-is-for-circinate.tumblr.com/) and [Hedgie](http://humanitarianhedgehog.tumblr.com/).

Allison Argent had never spent an entire school year in the same school, or even in the same district. She used to put an effort into making new friends with each transfer, but by the time her teenage years really got rolling, she’d given up. Friends still _happened_ , though. Someone’s curiosity would be piqued by having a new girl around, and she’d get taken by the arm and led into a social circle that already existed.

It was nice, having company for a few months, or a half a year, or however long her family stayed in a given town. But then they’d move again, and Allison would look at her Facebook feed a few weeks later and sigh, shoulders slumping, as she realized that none of them had an Allison-shaped hole in their life, and no one had left enough of an impression for her to miss them.

Her birthday present to herself every year was to purge her Facebook and e-mail contacts.

 

~

 

The Argents moved to Beacon Hills during winter break. Upon arriving, Victoria prowled through the house, taking inventory of boxes, and checking furniture for damages. Chris had his own inventory to take, which Allison offered to help with since handling the family’s business stock was a lot less intimidating than being near Victoria if she found any evidence of _careless handling_ of her antique dining room set.

“I think groceries might be higher priority right now,” Chris said, when Allison poked her head through the garage door. “Here, let’s make a list.” As the only thing in the kitchen was the doggy-bag from a Thai restaurant they’d stopped at on the drive from San Francisco, the shopping list proved to be quite extensive.

Grocery stores might vary in the details, but the general layouts were similar; produce together, usually near one door or the other, heavy products on lower shelves, bags of sugar and flour in the same aisle. Maybe the chocolate chips would be with them, maybe in the cookie aisle.

In _this_ one, Chris’s favorite type of canned soup happened to be on the top shelf, and the last two cans were all the way at the back. Allison stretched to her tip-toes, flailing her hand and feeling the can brush against her fingertips.

“You want me to get that?”

Allison dropped back down to her heels with a frustrated huff and looked over. A teenage boy with buzzed hair was pointing between himself and the soup-can, eyebrows raised. He had a gray t-shirt with target printed on it, in fading red-white-and-blue, and an oversized plaid button-up; the cuffs shook as he gestured. Next to him was a slightly shorter boy with black hair that reminded Allison of a Disney prince, smiling in a way made her want to smile back.

“Stiles,” the first said, sticking his thumb right in the center of the target on his chest. He waggled his fingers at his friend. “And Scott.”

“Allison,” she said, nodding, and then pulled her cart away from the shelf. “Go for it.”

Stiles grinned, and stepped up to the shelf of soup cans. He stretched and flailed the same way Allison had, but instead of just brushing the cans, his fingers got partway around them and knocked both forward.

Apparently the motion of the soup cans took Stiles by surprise, because he stumbled back from the shelf a little, and then a lot, as the cans tilted over and rolled forward. He caught one, and Scott caught the other. Allison laughed, and then hid her mouth behind her hand. The two boys handed the cans over, Scott with his infectious smile, and Stiles with a flourish that almost made him lose the can again.

“Thanks,” Allison said, dropping her hand down to put it back on the cart handle.

“No problem,” Scott said. “If we do it again, will you laugh some more? You have a good laugh.”

Allison felt a blush starting to grow on her face, and looked around for a distraction; the last few cans of her mother’s favorite soup were in the same predicament as her dad’s had been.

“I guess I could stand a repeat performance,” she said, with as much dignity as she could muster.

 

~

 

 “We’re having a Marvel marathon this week,” Scott said, walking next to Allison as they went through the store. “Well, it’s really an Avengers movie marathon, because none of us wanted to watch _Spiderman_.”

“Which one is for tonight?” Allison asked, adding a couple packs of spaghetti noodles to her cart, and checking it off her list.

“Tonight’s _Iron Man_ ,” Stiles said, appearing from behind and tossing a few boxes of microwave popcorn into Scott’s basket. “Both movies. Scott’s mom’s got tonight off, and she _really_ likes Robert Downey Junior.”

“ _Everyone_ likes Robert Downey Junior,” Scott said, swinging his basket to clip Stiles in the leg. “ _You_ like Robert Downey Junior.” There was a pause, and Scott turned to Allison. “Do you?”

“Yeah,” Allison said.

“Would you maybe– I mean if–”

“You wanna come to our marathon?” Stiles asked, cutting off Scott.

“I need to get these home,” Allison said, looking at the mass of groceries towering out of the cart. “But once I do, I’ll check with my parents, and give you guys a call?”

“Awesome!” Stiles said.

 “We’ll wait to start the movies,” Scott said, and programmed his and Stiles’ numbers into Allison’s phone. When Scott handed the phone back to Allison, their fingers brushed, and she felt herself blushing again.

 

~

 

Back at their new house, Chris met Allison’s request to spend the evening with new friends with a hug, a kiss on her forehead, and a quiet murmur of “Of course, sweetheart. Glad you’re making friends.”

In San Francisco, and the few towns before that, Allison hadn’t bothered to bring any classmates home, even to study, and Chris had told her he was getting worried by her apathy. Allison had wanted to reassure him she was fine, but making friends she’d forget about in a few months, just to make her dad stop fretting…felt unfair. To the other kids, that is.

It felt unfair to herself too, but she didn’t like thinking about that, because that quickly turned into “It’s unfair to make me move so much,” which she was _sure_ would hurt her dad’s feelings if said aloud. So she just told herself that she’d make friends in college, when she lived in a single town for an _entire four years_. She still had trouble wrapping her mind around a stretch of time that long.

“Call us if you’ll be out past midnight,” Victoria added, looking up from her examination of the den’s couch and chairs.

“Yes, Mom,” Allison said, and slipped back out the door. Out in the driveway, she leaned against her Mazda and called Scott to get directions. Around her, the bushes and trees circling the house faded from sharp greens to smudgy grays, as the winter sun turned late afternoon into early evening.

Stiles was standing on Scott’s porch, waving to a departing police cruiser, when Allison pulled up to the curb. “Somebody in trouble?” Allison asked, when she joined Stiles on the steps.

“Nah,” Stiles said, making a sweeping gesture to guide her inside. “Just my dad dropping me off. He’s the Sheriff.”

“Wait, isn’t–”

“You must be Allison,” a new voice said, and Allison turned around to see a woman leaning out of the kitchen, which was near the front door. Her curly hair was coming out of its ponytail. “I’m Melissa; the boys said you were coming. Stiles, can you grab the popcorn? I’m making my lunch for tomorrow, I’ll be there in a minute.”

“I can help,” Allison said, and wound up carrying two giant bottles of soda in one arm, lacing the handles of four empty mugs through her other hand. As she was setting them down on the coffee table, she turned to Stiles, her interrupted thought returning. “…wait, it’s Sheriff _Stilinski_ here, right?” she asked. “Does that mean your full name is _Stiles Stilinski_?”

“Stiles is a nickname,” Scott called, while Stiles scowled at him and slid the popcorn bowl into the table. “Don’t ask what his real name is,” Scott added, in a stage-whisper. “If he tells you, he bursts into flames.”

“Flames of embarrassment,” Stiles muttered, crossing his arms, and then uncrossing them and jamming his hands in his pockets. “You already know my dad?” he asked Allison.

“My parents mentioned him,” Allison said, sitting down on the couch. “We sell arms and munitions to the police.”

“That is so badass,” Scott said, joining her, and she felt a flutter of butterflies in her stomach. “You’re like Tony Stark!”

“But does she look as good in a suit?” Stiles mused quietly, and Scott elbowed him in the stomach. Allison snuck a glance to the side, and saw that Scott was blushing. Then Melissa finally came over, reaching over the couch to steal the remote from the teenagers on her way to the sole armchair.

 

~

 

“You up for more movies tomorrow?” Scott asked, as he and Stiles walked Allison to her car. Stiles had talked through both movies, and Scott had given some commentary too. By the time the second movie started, Allison had relaxed enough to join them. Melissa, meanwhile, had fallen asleep in her armchair.

“It’s gonna be _Thor_ and _The Incredible Hulk,_ ” Scott added, voice hopeful.

“I _want_ to be,” Allison said, biting her lip. “But I do kinda need to unpack.”

“We can help!” Scott said, and Stiles gave him a side-eye, and then a smirk. Scott ignored him.

“That’d be great!” Allison said, smiling. “Can you come over around lunch, maybe? If I tell my dad you’re helping us unpack, he might get us pizza.”

“Free pizza _is_ always good,” Stiles said. He had his hands in his pockets, and rocked back and forth a little on the balls of his feet. He tilted his head to the side, with a look of exaggerated contemplation. “If you let us pick out the pizza toppings, we’ll let you pick which order we watch in.”

“ _Incredible Hulk_ first,” Allison said immediately. “Since _Thor_ ’s better.”

“I like the Hulk,” Scott said, sounding a little sad.

“Yeah, but _Thor_ has Darcy,” Allison pointed out. “And a Hawkeye cameo. _Hulk_ just has…more Hulk.”

“She’s got a point dude,” Stiles said.

 

~

 

Helping the Argents unpack wasn’t nearly as exciting as Stiles had hoped for; all the weaponry was already locked away, and he and Scott were stuck re-arranging furniture and moving boxes of random stuff between rooms. Allison’s mom was arranging things to her liking in the master bedroom, and told Allison to get her own room into “some semblance of order”.

That meant Stiles and Scott spent a few hours with just Allison’s dad, who was kind of terrifying. Based on the glare he’d given them when they showed up, Stiles was pretty sure Allison had neglected to mention that her new friends were both guys.

They _did_ get to hang out with Allison for a bit when they were carrying a _way_ too heavy box of books up the stairs and Scott had an asthma attack.

“Are you okay?” Allison asked, hovering over Scott, who’d already taken a hit of his inhaler and was silently counting to ten, nodding his head a fraction with each second. She looked over at Stiles when Scott gave a thumbs up instead of saying anything. “Did we break him?”

“He’ll be fine,” Stiles said, waving his hand. Scott finished counting and gasped, then took a few deep breaths.

“I’m good,” Scott said, smiling distractedly at Allison. “Sorry for scaring you.”

Allison shook her head. “Not your fault. I’m the one that packed that box, I’m so sorry.”

“It’s not your fault either–” Scott started to say, but then Chris was yelling up the stairs at them.

“Everything all right up there?”

“Just peachy, Mr. Argent,” Stiles called back. He turned to Scott. “You gonna need a second hit, dude?”

“Not this time,” Scott said. Allison was still hovering, and twisting her fingers together. Scott smiled in a way that Stiles was _pretty_ sure was meant to be reassuring, but mostly looked confused. “I’m fine, Allison. Seriously, don’t worry about it.”

 

~

 

During _The Incredible Hulk_ , Allison found that she kept leaning towards Scott, and kept making herself pull back before _actually_ leaning on him. She’d noticed the butterflies-in-stomach feeling she always associate with a crush the day before, and tried to convince herself she was just excited to make new friends. Obviously, that wasn’t working.

Making friends was fine; Allison _wanted_ friends, even if she hadn’t put effort into making them in a while. Acting on a crush? That was just asking for heartbreak. Either he’d turn out to not like her back, and the friendship would get all awkward, or die entirely, or he _did_ like her too, and then both of them would be miserable once the Argents moved again.

So during _Thor_ she wrapped her hand around the armrest on the end of the couch, as an anchor, to keep on her own side. She made herself look _just_ at the screen, instead of sneaking glances towards Scott and seeing how he reacted to her favorite scenes. Or at least, she _tried_ to make herself look just at the screen…

Scott was _really_ cute when he smiled.

 

~

 

“Having some business associates over this afternoon,” Chris said the next morning, when Allison came downstairs to get breakfast. “It’s going to be a bit crowded.” This always happened fairly soon after moving, and Chris always gently shoo’d Allison out the door. He said it was mostly rather boring business discussions, with occasional tangents into gun efficiency, including discussion of messy wounds, and he’d really rather not subject Allison to that, even if it was just by her overhearing something on the route between, say, her room and the kitchen.

“Scott and Stiles offered to show me around town,” Allison said. She kissed her dad on the cheek to combat his mildly disgruntled _hmph_ noise. He liked her making friends, he liked her getting out of the house, he just didn’t like who it was with.

Shortly after breakfast, Stiles knocked on the door, and Allison hugged her dad goodbye and bounded towards the Jeep. Scott was waiting in the back seat, saying Allison got to sit shotgun because, as this was _her_ tour, she needed the best view.

Beacon Hills was fairly small, but as the tour was based on “Oh, yeah, you should see the school!” and “Hey, where _is_ the video store, anyway?” rather than a planned route, it took quite a few hours. Every destination sprouted up a different set of stories from Scott and Stiles’ shared memory cache.

When they ran out of un-seen town, Stiles turned the Jeep back towards Scott’s place; one of Melissa’s coworkers was throwing a baby-shower, and Melissa had agreed to bring desert. She’d even bought ingredients for butterscotch-chip cookies.  However, she’d also agreed to cover a shift for a _different_ coworker, and now had no time to bake.

By the time the sun went down, the three teenagers were covered in flour, the cookies were cooling all around the kitchen, and Allison had been caught up to speed on Stiles’ and Scott’s observations and opinions on half of their high school classmates, and _all_ of their teachers. She knew that Mr. Harris was considered evil incarnate even by other teachers, that Lydia Martin was a goddess (“One of those really mean goddesses though,” Scott had whispered as an aside. “I think she’d smite people if she could.”), and that _everyone_ liked Danny Mahealani. She also knew Beacon Hills favored lacrosse above all other sports, and that while Stiles and Scott both wanted to make first line, Scott was a lot more optimistic about it.

 

~

 

The night before school was due to start again, Allison answered her phone when Stiles called, and Scott didn’t. The only proper response to that, in Stiles’ world, was to drive the both of them out to the McCall house and knock on Scott’s window. Of course, getting to the window turned out to more challenging than Stiles remembered.

Scott was _as_ enthused about looking for the half a body as Stiles hoped, but _not_ as inclined to go tromping through the woods on a school night. Stiles would just have to play his trump card to make this happen.

“Come on dude, Allison’s already in the Jeep.”

“Wait, she is?” Scott asked.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, shrugging one shoulder. “I kind of told her you’d already said yes and were waiting to be picked up.”

“She’s coming to look for a half a dead body, in the woods, at night, because she thinks I’m coming too?” Scott asked, just to clarify. Was that a blush creeping over his face? Well, okay, Stiles actually couldn’t tell since it was too dark out. But if voices could blush, then Scott’s totally was.

“Yeah,” Stiles said, gesturing sharply for emphasis. “Just like _you’re_ coming along just because _she_ is.”

 

~

 

“Someone told me it rained less in California than in Washington,” Allison grumbled, as they hiked through the woods. Stiles had the flashlight, but not the steadiest hand, and the undergrowth was damp from the rain; Allison kept stumbling and catching herself on either trees, or Scott.

“It does rain less!” Stiles said. “That doesn’t mean _never_. And come on, isn’t navigating dangerous terrain part of your ninja training?”

“Her what?” Scott asked, as Allison snorted.

“She like, did a complete flip to get out of her window,” Stiles said, making a wild spinning motion with one hand, which made the light flash quickly over about twenty trees. “I figure, either her family are all ninjas, or she’s apprenticed to Black Widow and learning to be a super-spy assassin.”

“I took gymnastic for eight years,” Allison explained. “And you got the wrong Avenger; I’d be Hawkeye’s apprentice.”

“Because you like wearing ridiculous purple headgear?” Stiles asked.

“Because I have a box full of archery medals and trophies,” Allison said. She squinted into the distance, at a line of lights. “Um, guys? I think that’s the _actual_ search party over there.”

“Crud,” Scott said; he’d just pulled his inhaler out, and sucked in a hit as Stiles took off running, trying to get out of the way of the approaching line of searchers. “Dude, wait up!” Scott called, and chased after Stiles, and Allison chased after Scott.

Stiles was ahead of them and not the most cautious, and somehow Allison didn’t feel too surprised when he pretty much ran right into the search party’s dogs, who were with Stiles’ dad. _Of course_ the Sheriff was leading the search himself, Allison thought. She and Scott hid behind different trees, fighting the urge to glance around the trunks, and trying not to breath too loudly.

That plan worked for Allison. It didn’t work so well for Scott, who’d lost the tenuous grip on his inhaler when the dogs had started barking. It had gone flying past Stiles, and landed at Sheriff Stilinski’s feet. It wasn’t really possible for Stiles to deny Scott’s presence after that, and soon the Sheriff had both boys by their scruffs, leading them away.

So now Allison was in the woods, at night, in the rain, by herself, without a flashlight, trying to find her way back to the Jeep. She couldn’t actually drive the Jeep away, since Stiles had the keys, but if she could find the Jeep, she could find the road, and then walk home, and hopefully sneak back _in_ her second story window.

She remembered the delighted awe on Stiles’ face when she’d flipped out of her window, and grinned to herself. Getting back up was going to be more of challenge, but there was a promising tree near the wall of the house. She just hadn’t tested her climbing skills in a while.

Periodically during her trek, Allison patted the pocket of her jacket, feeling the lump made by her canister of pepper spray. When they’d lived in Washington State, which still had bears, her dad had drilled it into her head to always carry pepper spray in the woods. California hadn’t had bears in the wild in decades, but it seemed like a good idea nonetheless.

After ten minutes of hiking, Allison became sure that something was following her. Her footsteps were breaking twigs and squishing wet leaves, but it seemed like some of the noises were coming from somewhere else, maybe a bit to her left, maybe behind her, maybe both. She kept her pace and slid her hand into her pocket, wrapping her fingers around the canister of pepper spray.

Her hand was just staring to withdraw from her pocket, still holding the canister, when the thing following her slammed into her side and _bit_.

She screamed and sprayed in the general direction of the pain. There was a startled, angry, animal sound, and the teeth withdrew. Allison sprayed again and shoved herself to her feet, dropping the canister. Hands pressed to her bleeding side, she ran.


	2. Chapter 2

Allison woke up twice.

The first time was under a bush in Scott’s yard, still at night. She had very little memory of getting from the woods to Scott’s house, and was startled awake by a car engine, and boots on gravel, and distant voices far too close. She could hear Melissa asking Scott why on earth he’d thought going to the nature preserve in the middle of the night was a good idea. Allison was up and running again by the time Melissa shut the door.

The second time was in her own bed, as the edge of the sun invaded her open window. Allison came to consciousness wrapped around a pillow, curled so tightly her whole body hurt from the effort. Digging her cellphone out of her pocket made two things clear. One, it was almost seven in the morning, and two, the top of her jeans were bloody.

Allison stared at the smear of red on her hand for a minute, long enough for seven AM to arrive and make her cell phone shriek out its usual wake-up alarm. Rudely shaken from her reverie, Allison jabbed at her phone until it shut up. Alarm dismissed, the screen filled with message notifications.

Stiles had left a couple texts, asking if she had gotten home all right. Scott? Twice as many, plus one voicemail. _Home fine, sorry I worried you_ , Allison sent, and dragged herself to the bathroom.

Under the bright bathroom light, door locked behind her, Allison stripped off her layers. The right side of her jeans’ waistband and the inside of her jacket were both bloody. She’d gotten blood out of denim plenty of times, some spit and a soak should–

“ _How did this happen, Allison?_ ” Victoria’s voice was sharp in her mind, and Allison winced, then double-checked that the door was still firmly locked. She shook her head, trying to clear her thoughts, and pulled a plastic garbage bag out from under the sink. Allison shoved the jacket and her jeans inside, then yanked off her t-shirt. It was ripped, and bloodier than the other two items combined. In to the bag it went.

Looking at the bite on her side was awkward, and Allison twisted in front of the mirror. After washing away the sticky scarlet mess on the surface, she stared at the deep red punctures. They looked like they should hurt, but mostly they felt numb.

“I should go to the hospital,” she muttered.

But she didn’t.

Instead she found the first aid kid in her room, dressed her wounds, and then put on the outfit she’d picked out yesterday. _First impressions matter_ , Victoria always said, _almost as much as last impressions_. So Allison always assembled a first-day-at-new-school outfit the night before.

Allison jammed the garbage bag of incriminating clothes into a gym duffel, and tiptoed to the garage with it and her backpack. Popping the trunk of her Mazda to toss them in made her wince. She blamed the noise on the garage’s acoustics, and turned back to the house for breakfast.

Half a minute after getting to the kitchen, her dad walked in. “Ready for the first day?” Chris asked.

“Ready as always,” Allison said, like she did every time she started at a new school. At least this was classes re-starting after the winter break; much better than being flung in partway through a semester. Starting in winter or fall or the middle of spring didn’t really make a difference to a new girl’s social status at this point though, since by high school everyone at school would all know each other anyway.

She knew Stiles and Scott though, and that thought cut through the fog of anxiety that had been clouding her brain since waking up. That was a first for her, having friends before classes even started. She wondered if she’d miss them when her family moved again. If the sudden twist of her stomach at that question was anything to go by, the answer was _yes_. She’d miss them a _lot_.

She wondered if they’d miss her.

 

~

 

Allison had just closed her locker after her final class when she heard heels clicking up behind her. As she turned she took a deep instinctive breath in through her nose, and felt her whole body relax. She’d been noticing her classmates’ hair and body products all day, and this was the first person who’d created a combination that was harmonious, instead of clashing.

“That jacket is absolutely killer,” said the girl in the heels. She was resting her right elbow on her left arm, and languidly pointed her hand towards Allison’s brown leather jacket. The gesture drew attention to her red hair, and Allison pushed down an urge to reach out and run her fingers through it, just to see if it felt as good as it smelled. “Where’d you get it?”

“My mom was a buyer for a boutique in San Francisco,” Allison answered. Victoria was still working with the boutique, actually, but in a long-distance advisory capacity.

“And _you_ are my new best friend,” the girl said, with a look that was both fond and calculating. Allison smiled, trying to be _subtle_ about inhaling through her nose. She wanted to get as much of this melodious scent into her as possible before the other girl inevitably _left_ –

She twitched as some expensive cologne added itself to the mix, and suddenly there was a boy there. _Jackson,_ if Allison had heard the girl right. He and the girl kissed, rather loudly, and Allison tried to keep her face neutral. It probably didn’t matter if a little bit of her disgust showed through; neither of them would likely notice.

“So,” the girl said, turning back out of the kiss, towards Allison. “I’m Lydia. This is my boyfriend, Jackson.”

_That much was obvious_ , Allison thought, followed by _I can see why Stiles called her a goddess_. “I’m Allison,” she said, and tilted her head inquisitively. “You’re not on the lacrosse team, are you?” she asked Jackson.

“He’s the captain,” Lydia said smugly, while Jackson smirked.

“So that’s why your name was familiar,” Allison said. “Stiles and Scott mentioned you.” She decided not to add that it had mostly been complaining about Jackson being an asshole. Thought maybe she should, if it would make him leave and take his obnoxious cologne with him.

“Are they on the team?” Lydia asked, looking puzzled.

“They’re on the bench,” Jackson said dismissively, and Allison bristled. Before she could snap though, Jackson changed the subject. “So, there’s a party on Friday. Everyone’s coming.”

“You should too,” Lydia added. “It’s at my place.”

 

~

 

“Soooooooooooooooo,” Stiles said, sidling up next to Allison as she walked down the hall. He was on his way to lacrosse practice, and she was heading home to go over all the extra material her teachers had given her, to make sure she was up to speed. “That was Lydia Martin you were talking to.”

“Mm-hm,” Allison said, nodding. “She smelled nice.”

“She smelled nice,” Stiles said back, eyebrows going up, head tilting back a tad.

“Oh, that sounds weird doesn’t it,” Allison said quietly, as Scott joined them. “I just meant…it’s something about her perfume, I think. Anyway, she invited me to a party on Friday, I asked if I could bring guests. She said it’s an open party, so…”

“So we’re all going to Lydia’s on Friday?” Stiles asked, beaming. “That is beyond awesome.”

“If I make it through the week,” Allison said, rubbing her forehead.

“What’s wrong?” Scott asked.

“Everything’s so _loud,_ ” Allison said. “And scents are…stronger than usual. Like, I can tell you two wear different types of deodorant, and that’s just weird.”

“Gee Spidey, you get bit by anything radioactive lately?” Stiles asked, grinning. They were almost at the locker room now, so they paused in the hallway for a moment.

“Yeah, actually,” Allison said. “I don’t think it was radioactive though. Wouldn’t that just kill you? But I did get bitten.” Allison rubbed at her forehead again, trying to clear the fog from her head.

“Wait, you got bit?” Scott asked, eyes going wide. “By what?”

“I don’t know,” Allison said. “I’d show you the bite, but, um, bandages. It was big and furry, and it didn’t like being pepper-sprayed.”

“Maybe it was a werewolf,” Stiles said, looking excited at the prospect. “That’d explain the Super Senses, right?”

“The hospital couldn’t tell what the bite came from?” Scott asked, still looking worried.

“I didn’t go to the hospital,” Allison said, suddenly wondering _why_ she hadn’t. “I just…went home. I really don’t want my parents to know I was out in the woods, okay, and the hospital would want my name, and–”

“You might need a rabies shot,” Scott said. He bit his lip. “My boss has some? I mean, he’s a vet, so we’ve got a lot of different vaccines for pets, but we’ve got a rabies emergency vaccine for humans, too, in case we get bit.”

“Guess we know what we’re doing after practice today,” Stiles said.

“Guess so,” Allison agreed with a sigh.

 

~

 

It turned out getting a rabies vaccine shot hurt like hell. But only for a moment, at least for Allison, and shortly she was sitting up again, swinging her legs off the vet table, thanking Stiles for guarding the door, and Scott for administering the shot.

Walking out of the veterinary clinic where Scott worked afterwards, Allison caught his hand. The odds were against her family staying long enough for her to graduate from the Beacon Hills high school, especially since she was a sophomore this year, she knew that. She knew she’d have to let go and move on, when the call came to pack her things again.

But maybe heartbreak later would be worth it, if she got to hang on for now.

Scott squeezed her hand as soon as she’d taken his, and then did a double take. He looked at her face, then at their clasped hands, then back at her face, smiling like he couldn’t believe what his senses were telling him. She smiled back, an open laughing smile, and squeezed his hand back.

 

~

 

Somehow, Stiles’ far-too-casual comment of “You know, they’re still looking for that half a body,” Tuesday morning led to the three of them going back to the woods after school. They left Allison’s Mazda at her house, strapped Scott’s bike to the back of Stiles’ Jeep, and took off.

Allison decided she liked the woods during the day. The three of them paused every now and then for Scott to use his inhaler, usually halfway up a hill, and Allison would just tilt her head back and look up at the canopy, taking a deep breath in through her nose. There were so many smells; sun-warmed bark, moss in the deep shadows that still held rain from the night before, pine needles breaking under her sneakers. She loved all of them.

On flat ground, almost at a clearing, Allison finally caught a scent she didn’t like at all; stale blood.

She spun around a split second before an angry voice made Scott and Stiles spin around too.

“What are you doing here?” the stranger asked. He had longer hair than Stiles, which wasn’t hard, but it looked _harsher_ , dark and cold like his black leather jacket. “This is private property.”

“We were just leaving,” Allison said. The stranger raised his eyebrows, and then threw something. Allison shot her own up in time to keep whatever it was from hitting Scott; she’d moved in between the boys and the stranger– who’d now turned and was stalking away –without noticing.

“Dude,” Stiles said. “That was Derek Hale.”

“Sorry, I’m missing the significance,” Allison said, reluctantly turning from Derek’s vanishing form and back to her friends.

“Most of his family died in a house fire,” Stiles explained. “Like six years ago.”

“What’s he doing back in town, though?” Scott asked.

Stiles just shrugged, and glanced at Allison. “What’d he toss you?”

She looked down at her hand, and uncurled her fingers. It was her pepper spray.

 

~

 

When Allison got home from the woods, she was sent back out for groceries. When she got home from _that_ , her mother was waiting in the kitchen for her, having just hung up the landline phone.

“You just missed a call from your friend Lydia,” Victoria Argent said.

“Oh, I must have…” Allison checked her cellphone, and realized she’d left it turned off after class. She turned it on and shoved it back into the front pocket of her jeans, not wanting to check her messages in front of her mother. “Is everything okay?”

“She just wanted to double check that you were coming to her party on Friday,” Victoria said. “I think you should, hm? Make some friends outside of class.”

“I made friends,” Allison said automatically.

Victoria sighed.

 

~

 

Lydia Martin was bored, plain and simple. Her classes hadn’t been challenging in a while, she’d firmly established her role as Queen Bee at school by the end of freshman year, and no one was fighting her for it.

So of _course_ she honed in on the new girl that showed up after winter break; _new_ would also mean _interesting_ , at least for a while. And to Lydia’s delight, Allison turned out to be interesting in her own right, not just from her newness. She was fun to talk with, she asked questions and challenged Lydia’s opinions instead of just agreeing with everything, and Lydia found herself seeking out Allison’s company more than anyone else’s, both during school hours and after.

Allison wasn’t joining Lydia and Jackson and the others for lunch though, to Lydia’s disappointment. Instead, Allison always sat with those two bench-warmer friends of hers, Stiles and Scott. The notable absence of Allison from her side during lunch was making Lydia uncomfortable aware of how many thoughts she bit down and swallowed around her other friends.

She didn’t like thinking about that, so instead she simply told herself that she was bored at lunch because she was _used_ to her other friends, and that it was always fun to bring different people together and see how they got along, and if she had to add Stiles and Scott to her lunchtime social circle in order to bring in Allison, well, so be it.

So on Thursday, the day of their first lacrosse game of the season, Lydia walked past her usual table and strutted across the lunchroom to sit down next to Allison.

“Hey there,” Lydia said brightly.

“Hi,” Allison said back, tentatively. Scott was on Allison’s other side, one hand on her lower back, and Stiles was across the table from them, looking poleaxed by Lydia’s appearance. This quickly changed to looking bewildered when Jackson, following Lydia’s lead, joined the table as well. Jackson’s best friend Danny sat down with them too, and acted as a magnet for the rest of their usual crowd.

“You’re gonna help me cheer the game tonight, right Allison?” Lydia asked, nudging her shoulder.

“Uh, yeah,” Allison said, nodding, and looking around at the suddenly full table. “Yeah. Uh. Totally.”

 

~

 

The parking lot right after school was always a zoo; almost everyone was in a rush to leave, and most of the kids with cars were still getting the hang of the whole “you go, no you go, no _you_ fucking go” process of traffic congestion.

Today was one of those days when Stiles was willing to wait the mess out, leaning against the hood of his Jeep and watching the kids with nicer cars flip each other off. Yeah, his Jeep was a badass and could totally handle getting banged up, but that didn’t mean it _had_ to.

“Stiles.”

He jumped, and spun around, smacking one arm against the hood in the process.

“Oh, Allison, hi.”

Allison glanced around, then smiled and waved as Jackson’s Porsche flew by, with Lydia laughing in the front seat. Once it was out of the lot, Allison turned back to Stiles, smile gone.

“How serious were you when you said it could’ve been a werewolf?” she asked.

“Uh…” Stiles said, jaw dropping a little lower than usual. Allison waited. “Well, um, I guess…how serious I was depends on how serious you are?”

“The bite is completely gone,” Allison told him, voice low. “Not even a scar. Last night I did something with my car I didn’t even know was _possible_ to avoid hitting a dog in the road, and this morning I woke up _already running through the woods_. And tomorrow night is the full moon. I kind of want to know if I’m gonna kill anyone at Lydia’s party.”

Her face was scrunched up, embarrassed, and worried, and nervous.

Stiles rubbed the back of his head. “That’s…pretty serious.”

 

~

 

Lydia had made a sign to cheer on Jackson, rather than the whole team, which somehow did not surprise Allison at all. When they arrived at the bleachers, Allison waved to Scott and Stiles down on the bench, while Lydia blew kisses to Jackson, and waved to Danny over at the net.

The game itself was a lot more interesting than Allison had expected. Entrancing, even. She paid attention to the players at first, she really did, but somehow she went from watching whoever had the ball, to the ball itself. It flew like a little bird, rolled on the ground like a mouse, got scooped up and tossed and moved so fast so enticingly–

Stiles was staring at her from the bench, eyes narrowed. Allison flinched, and gulped. Someone from their team scored, and the bleachers erupted in cheers, with Lydia flailing her sign and shrieking in delight. Then she half-turned and _hugged_ Allison, who jumped, and then hugged back, with Lydia jumping up and down a bit without letting go.

Allison used the hug to bury her face in Lydia’s hair and inhaled, fast and deep, letting Lydia’s perfume permeate her sinuses. By the time Lydia let go, which was probably sooner than it felt like, Allison’s heart-rate was back to normal, and she didn’t feel like trying to leap up and _catch_ the lacrosse ball anymore.

Stiles had his eyebrows raised, and Allison gave him a thumbs up. He nodded slowly, then nudged Scott, grinning and nodding towards Allison and Lydia in the bleachers. Scott waved, smiling, and Allison waved back.

She watched Scott for the rest of the game, instead of the players on the field or the ball. Scott alternated between watching the game, and looking back at her, with this surprised smile every time. Allison knew she was blushing.

 

~

 

That had been Thursday. Friday after school was when Stiles and Allison finally got a chance to tell Scott that that night’s party was going to be…problematic.

“You wanted to _eat_ the lacrosse ball?” Scott asked, eyes going wide.

“No, just…catch it,” Allison said. “…with my teeth.”

“Werewolf,” Stiles said, in a sing-song tone.

“We don’t know for _sure_ ,” Allison said.

“Oh, we’ll know,” Stiles said. “Full moon, bloodlust, party full of meat on legs? I think we’re gonna find out pretty fast.”

“We don’t have to go,” Scott said. He and Allison were sitting on Stiles’ bed, while Stiles himself was at his computer.

“My mom wants me to meet more people,” Allison said, bringing her hand to her mouth, and nipping a little at the skin on her knuckles. “And once Lydia called my house to see if I was coming and that’s how my mom heard about the party, and gave permission for me to go, Lydia’s been all perky and pushy–”

“Yeah she does that,” Stiles commented.

“–and she’s expecting me to be there, and she’s been really great about getting me used to the school, I mean you guys have been great but teachers actually _listen_ when she tells them my old school didn’t cover something, and I _really_ don’t want to disappoint her, or my _mom,_ but I also don’t wanna flip out and kill anybody–”

“Allison…” Scott said, breaking off her nervous rambling. “Maybe. Take your hand outta your mouth?”

“Huh?” Allison glanced down, and then dropped her hand. She’d been talking around her teeth, worrying the skin of her knuckles with her incisors. “Oh my god.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. “This party’s gonna be a blast, I can tell.”


	3. Chapter 3

The three of them had a plan. A good plan, an _excellent plan_ , if you asked Stiles, because they didn’t even have to lie about anything. Since getting caught in the woods with Stiles, Scott’s mom had given him curfew for the first month of school, 8PM on school nights and 11PM on weekends.

And yeah, Scott took his bike everywhere, but were you really gonna make the kid bike home in the dark after a party?

So they left Stiles’ Jeep at home, and Allison was Scott and Stiles’ ride. All they had to do was not actually _tell_ anyone what Scott’s actual curfew was, and they could leave whenever Allison felt like she was wolfing out or whatever she was gonna call it, and blame it on Scotty’s curfew.

It was an awesome plan, and it would have been perfect, except the first stages of _wolfing out_ looked a lot less monster-y and lot more drugged-y than any of them had expected, and Lydia Martin took her responsibilities as hostess very fucking seriously.

 

~

 

Lydia was having a totally awesome party, thank you very much. There was soda and snacks and music and dancing, and if anyone snuck some alcohol in, well, that was okay as long as they kept it out of the common punch bowl and didn’t wave it around too obviously.

Lydia was making out with Jackson when someone bumped past them without apologizing, and then a second someone bumped past going “Allison, Allison, what’s wrong?”

Making out would have to wait.

“Allison?” Lydia asked, after shoving past Scott and putting a hand on Allison’s shoulder. “Sweetie, you okay?”

“It’s too hot and loud and noisy and–”

Allison kept talking, mostly repeating herself, and Lydia checked her forehead. Scott and Jackson trailed along as Lydia steered Allison towards the stairs.

“Jackson,” Lydia said, pausing for a moment, while Allison buried her face in Lydia’s shoulder and _whined_. “Tell everyone to go home. This party is over.”

“Things just got really going–” Jackson started to say, and Lydia cut him off.

“Someone spiked Allison’s drink, with _what_ I don’t know,” she said. “This party. Is over.”

Jackson looked startled, and appalled, and then turned around and started making people leave. Satisfied, Lydia walked Allison up the stairs towards her bedroom. “It’s okay Allison, come on, we’ll get you some water and call your parents–”

“Nooooooo,” Allison moaned.

“Her parents would never let her come back,” Stiles said. He and Scott had dodged past Jackson, and were following Lydia and Allison. “You tell her folks this happened, your house is no longer considered safe for their precious, precious baby.”

“Okay, okay, no parents,” Lydia said, and Allison mumbled “thank you” against Lydia’s hair. Lydia gave Scott and Stiles her best death glare. “No boys either. Shoo. Go home.”

“Allison drove us here,” Scott said. “And we can’t leave her alone like this–”

“She’s not alone,” Lydia said, surprised the death glare hadn’t worked already. “She has me. Okay? Now go.”

Scott and Stiles stumbled back down the stairs, looking nervous, and then got swept into the throng of kids leaving the party.

Lydia got Allison settled on her side on Lydia’s bed, and sighed.

This was no longer the most awesome party ever.

 

~

 

Stiles didn’t know what to do. Getting separated had not been part of the plan, and it was close to Scott’s _actual_ curfew now, and Allison’s keys were up there with her, but it wasn’t like he could drive Scott home even if they had the keys, because the full moon was clearly doing _something_ to Allison, and what if she killed Lydia, and _oh my god_. Stiles was already pushing back towards the stairs when his phone buzzed in his pocket.

There was a text message from Scott: _Derek Hale’s giving me a ride. WTF. Text you when I get home. Allison OK?_

Stiles shoved the phone in his pocket and went back up the stairs, shoving past Jackson, who’d just finished kicking out everyone else.

 

~

 

Getting away from the crowd had actually helped, and now that the loud music was shut off too, Allison felt a lot more like herself. She pushed herself up, and Lydia handed her a glass of water.

“How you feeling?” Lydia asked.

“Better,” Allison said. _Way too aware of your heartbeat_ , she didn’t add.

There were two more heartbeats approaching now, and arguing voices, and then Stiles burst the door open, with Jackson glaring murder at the back of his head.

“You okay, Allison?” Stiles asked.

“I think so,” Allison said.

“You want more water?” Lydia asked, stroking her hair.

“Could I have a Coke, actually?” Allison asked. She wanted something a little more syrupy than water, maybe a little sticky, and if she could convince herself she was craving something sweet instead of something salty, well, _good_.

“Jackson, is there any Coke left?” Lydia asked. The far-too-sweet voice she used with Jackson made Allison’s fingers clench against the bed sheets, but then Lydia started stroking her hair again and she relaxed a little.

“I’ll go check,” Jackson said. He tried to drag Stiles away with him, but Stiles was firmly attached to the door frame, and Jackson gave up after a moment, vanishing back down the stairs.

“You sure you’re okay?” Stiles asked. He leaned a little farther into the room, but at Lydia’s glare, leaned back out, so only his fingers on the door frame kept him from falling into the hallway.

“No,” Allison admitted. She was having an easier time concentrating on their heartbeats than on their voices, and that scared her. She glanced at the alarm clock on Lydia’s desk, realized it was almost 11PM already. “Where’s Scott?”

“He got a ride home,” Stiles said. “From Derek Hale of all people.”

Allison went very, very, still, and Lydia’s hand stroking her hair pulled back slowly.

“The guy from the woods?” Allison asked, closing her eyes.

“The one and only,” Stiles said. “Didn’t really figure him for the good Samaritan type.”

“He’s not,” Allison said, and it was hard to get the words out. Her mouth felt wrong. “He’s not. He’s not a good guy, he smells like blood, like, like, like stale _human blood_ oh my god I have to find Scott–”

 

~

 

“Stiles.”

“Yes, Lydia?”

“Stiles, did Allison just jump out of my second story window?”

“Yeah, yeah I think so Lydia. Don’t worry, I’ve seen her do the same thing with her house, she’s got this cool flip she does to land okay, and–”

“Stiles.”

“Yes, Lydia?”

“You saw her face too. With the…canines. And the glowing yellow eyes.”

“Don’t know what you’re talking about,” Stiles said, shaking his head. Lydia glared at him, but then Jackson’s voice came up the stairs.

“There wasn’t any Coke, but I found some root beer,” Jackson was saying.

Lydia yanked Stiles off the door frame and dragged him into the hallway, closing her bedroom door behind them.

“Oh, Jackson, thank you,” Lydia cooed, taking the can of root beer. “I’ll just put this back in the fridge, okay? Allison fell asleep.”

“Is she okay?” Jackson asked, concerned.

“Oh yeah,” Lydia said, nodding. “Whatever it was, it’s wearing off fast. But she needs some peace and quiet.” She handed the root beer to Stiles without looking, and stepped closer to Jackson. “You have been _such_ a help tonight. And I am so sorry we had to cut the party short, and especially sorry that _we_ got interrupted.”

Stiles looked at the wall.

“I am gonna make it up to you, okay?” Lydia said to Jackson, fingers playing with the collar of his shirt. “But for right now, how about you head home, and uh, call me when you get up tomorrow?” She kissed him. Not that Stiles was watching. Because he wasn’t. He was looking at the wall. But it was a very wet, _loud_ kiss.

“Downstairs is kind of a mess,” Jackson said, when the kiss finally ended.

“Stiles is gonna help me clean up,” Lydia said. “Right, Stiles?”

“Uh, yeah totally, I’m great at cleaning,” Stiles said, looking away from the wall. “Parties. Cleaning up parties. Totally great.”

His phone buzzed again. Another message from Scott: _I’m home. Allison OK?_

 

~

 

The spray from an Albuterol inhaler had a very distinct smell, stark and medicinal in comparison to the usual scents of the forest.

It wasn’t until someone threw the inhaler against her face that Allison realized that was the _only_ part of Scott’s scent she’d been chasing. Not his shampoo, not his deodorant, and not even a little bit of the grass smell that clung to him after lacrosse practice, which always made Allison think of sunshine.

“Where is he?” she snarled at Derek, who was standing in the woods the same way Lydia would have stood in a shopping mall, completely at home, yet also all business.

“Safe,” Derek said. “From you.”

“He might need this!” Allison screamed, shaking the inhaler at Derek.  She was balanced on her feet and one hand, legs bent so she could spring at any moment. “He needs this, and you took it away!”

“He dropped it,” Derek said. “And I needed to get you away from the crowd.”

“I was doing fine!” Allison snapped. She unbent slowly, still brandishing the inhaler in the air.

“No,” Derek said. “You weren’t.”

There was a whistling sound, a very familiar whistling sound, actually, followed by the incredibly unfamiliar sensation of an arrow piercing Allison’s arm and pinning her to a tree.

 

~

 

“So,” Lydia said, delicately picking up discarded soda cans and dropping them in the garbage bag she was carrying. Her voice was both perky and terrifying. “Stiles. Mind telling me what that was all about?”

“What,” Stiles said. “You mean when Allison freaked out because I told her Scott got a ride from Derek Hale? I think it’s because he’s got a creepy ass serial killer vibe, and we met him in the woods, the same woods where a body was found before school started, well, half a body, and I mean, I’m nervous about Scotty getting a ride from him, but he got home okay, so, uh, no harm done?”

Lydia tilted her head, and gave him a _look_. “Really, Stiles? _That_ part was obvious. I meant, what was up, with her ears getting pointy enough to stick out of her hair, and her eyes glowing yellow, and her canines enlarging enough to distort her _jaw_.”

Stiles decided maybe not answering at all was a good idea.

“I know you saw it too,” Lydia said, knotting up her garbage bag and dragging it to the kitchen. “And you know if you don’t tell me, I’m just going to ask Allison herself at school on Monday. _If_ she shows up.”

“No you won’t,” Stiles said, with absolute surety. “Not at school.”

“And you know that, because…?” Lydia drawled.

“Because you sent Jackson away,” Stiles said, looking over at Lydia, who had one hand planted on her hip. “Because you told him Allison was asleep, instead of that she left. You already know it has to stay secret.”

Lydia nodded, then crossed her arms. “Allison’s my friend. Whatever’s going on with her is safe with me. But if she can do that, I’m guessing other people can too, and I’d really like to know if I should be investing in silver bullets, or wreaths of garlic.”

 

~

 

Allison shrieked with pain. She grabbed the shaft of the arrow and snapped it, and then Derek hauled her away from the tree, leaving the rest of the arrow stuck in the trunk, covered in Allison’s blood.

They ran, Derek keeping one hand on Allison’s shoulder to steer, and Allison sobbing and holding onto her arm. It _hurt_ , and her _head_ hurt, her _heart_ hurt. It didn’t make sense, none of this made _sense_ , why would her dad _do_ that–

Ages later, ages of running, Derek must have decided they were safe, because he shoved Allison’s shoulder so she stumbled against a tree, and then fell to the forest floor. Derek crouched down next to her as Allison struggled to sit up, clutching her bloody arm, which no longer had a hole in it.

“Why did they do that?” Allison asked, hating the way her voice refused to even out despite her teeth finally being back to normal, hating the way tears were streaming down her face. She wanted to wipe them away, but that would have just spread blood across her cheeks.

“Those were hunters,” Derek said. “They’ve been after us for centuries.”

“But _why?_ ”

“Because sometimes werewolves kill humans,” Derek said. “Especially on the full moon. Humans tend to go a little overboard when that happens. One of the reasons we try to keep a low profile.”

“But I didn’t kill anyone,” Allison said, trying to slow her breathing down and failing. “I didn’t hurt anyone.”

“Neither did I,” Derek said, and Allison let out a bark of laughter.

“Yeah, uh huh, then why did you reek of blood that day?” Allison asked. She finally let go of her healed arm, holding her bloody hand towards Derek. Anger felt better than betrayal. Anger made her voice stop shaking. “You smelled like _this_ , but _old_.”

“I didn’t kill anyone,” Derek said. “And my scent is not your business.”

“Uh huh,” Allison said again. She pushed herself to her feet. “No, okay, fine, your scent is all over the woods, including that hint of blood, I’m with _you_ when my dad shoots me in the arm, and _somebody_ turned me into a werewolf, and _you’re_ the only other one out here, so yes Mr. Derek Hale, I think why you smelled like old blood is _definitely_ my business.”

Derek pushed himself to his feet too, but grew very still as Allison spoke.

“…your dad,” Derek repeated.

“Yeah,” Allison said. She wiped her bloody hands on her shirt, it was probably ruined anyway, and used the back of her hand to wipe away the tears on her face. “The one with the bow was my dad. You know, suddenly, the whole ‘ _Oh, we move all the time because we sell munitions to the police’_ is feeling a lot less like a _real_ reason and a lot more like a _cover_.”

“Your father is Chris Argent,” Derek said. He sounded disbelieving.

“Mm-hm,” Allison said. “Are you telling me, you bit me, and stalked me, and stole my boyfriend’s inhaler to get me out here, and you didn’t even know my name?”

“I didn’t bite you,” Derek said. “And only knew your first name, not your last.” He rubbed a hand across his face. “You should leave. Get home before your father does.”

 

~

 

Her car was back at Lydia’s. Allison hesitated a block away, not sure if she should apologize for her abrupt departure, or just jump in her car and zoom away and pretend at school that nothing had happened.

Then she remembered she still had to give Stiles a lift home. So she straightened her bloody shirt, squared her shoulders, and knocked on the door.

Lydia flung the door open a split second later, looked Allison up and down, and said “Okay, I _cannot_ let you go home from my party covered in blood. You’re borrowing one of my tops, and tomorrow we’re going shopping. If this is going to be a regular thing, we need to get you a wardrobe that’s both chic _and_ ready-washable.”

Allison giggled, surprising herself, and Lydia smirked.

“All I want in exchange is the full story,” Lydia said. “For someone who never shuts up, Stiles has managed to say an awfully _small_ amount, and I have to admit, I’m wildly curious.”

“I promise _all_ the details,” Allison said, her face breaking into a smile.

 

~

 

_Sorry I lost your inhaler_ , Allison texted to Scott, after getting home.

_It’s OK, I’ve got a spare_ , he sent back.


	4. Chapter 4

Her cellphone buzzing on the wooden bedside table awoke Allison on Saturday morning. She reached over without looking, and pulled it over to where she had her face buried in the pillow.

“Hello?”

“You’re picking me up at eleven,” Lydia said without preamble. “We have some serious shopping ahead of us.”

“Okay,” Allison said groggily, and hung up. It was only nine, so she set her phone alarm to go off at ten, and went back to sleep.

She swung around the door frame into the kitchen an hour and a half later, and jumped when she saw her dad at the stove, making an omelet.

“Good morning,” he said fondly, as Allison hovered in the doorway. “How was the party?”

“Good,” Allison said. “It was good.” She made herself walk the rest of the way in, and grab a muffin from the breadbox. He couldn’t have recognized her last night, she’d already convinced herself of that before going home. He would have…would have called out to her, instead of shooting, if he’d known.

“I’m going to the mall with Lydia today,” she said, grabbing a bottle of water from the fridge and stowing it in her purse. “Do you need me to pick anything up?”

“I’ve been meaning to stock up on spare light bulbs,” Chris said.

“I’ll get some on the way home,” Allison said, and turned to leave.

“Oh, and sweetheart?” Chris called. Allison paused in the doorway, one hand on the frame. She’d heard everyone else’s heartbeats last night, but right now all she could hear was her own.

“Yeah, Dad?”

“Have a good time.”

 

~

 

Allison started the story in the car, as she and Lydia drove the mall. She’d planned on starting with the phone call from Stiles on Sunday night, the one that had led to looking for half of a body in the woods. But Lydia wanted to know how Allison had even _known_ Stiles and Scott, what with being new in town, so she started her story with the soup cans in the grocery store.

 They were at the mall by the time Allison got to the part about being bitten, and the rest of the tale came in fits and spurts while they shopped.

“And of course, you saw what happened at your party,” Allison was saying, rifling through a rack of long-sleeved T-shirts, when Lydia’s phone rang. Allison winced at the sound.

“Hello?” Lydia said, answering. “Oh, Jackson! Oh I am _so_ sorry– no I can’t make it today. Yes, I know I promised. But after last night Allison could really use some retail therapy so she and I are out at the– _well_ she woke back up after you left and hurled all over my bed. It was disgusting. If I ever find out who drugged her I am going to hang them by their ankles from the top of the courthouse.”

Allison kept sliding the T-shirts along the rack, making their hangers squeak on the bar. If she listened right, she could hear Jackson’s side of the conversation too, but she felt guilty eavesdropping. She moved on to a different section of the store and jangled a set of chained belts, drowning out the phone call.

Lydia ended the call with a kiss noise and sauntered over to Allison, who had stopped fidgeting with the belts and was checking her text messages.

“You were saying…?”

“What I was saying can wait a few minutes,” Allison said. She looked up from her phone at Lydia. “The boys kind of need to be in on the next part, so I told Scott to meet us at the food court around noon. And it’s…twelve-thirty now and they finally got here.”

 

~

 

Lydia was unsurprised, but still displeased, to see that the food court was rather crowded. She couldn’t see Scott or Stiles, and turned towards Allison, intending to ask her to call Scott and tell him to stand up and wave. But Allison had her head tilted, holding her hair back away from one ear, and her eyes closed.

“This way,” Allison said after a moment, darting for an opening in the crowd. Lydia followed, biting her tongue to keep from cursing as the mass of people jostled her. She almost lost a shopping bag when it snagged on a stroller, and once Allison had to come back and pull her out of a clump of middle school kids by her elbow.

Stiles waved when he saw them, breaking off his conversation with Scott. They’d wedged four chairs around a table meant for two, and Stiles’ elbow clipped Scott’s ear as he stood up. His own chair tangled with one of the extras, and he turned the panicked grab to keep it from falling into a pull, and gestured with a nervous smile for Lydia to take the seat.

Lydia rolled her eyes, but accepted. “How did you do that?” she asked Allison, once she’d arranged her legs and arms in as lady-like fashion as possible.

“Scott has a…distinct voice,” Allison said, shrugging, and sliding into empty chair between Scott and Lydia. Scott took advantage of the proximity to kiss Allison’s cheek, earning a brief unguarded smile.

“So you’ve gained enhanced hearing?” Lydia asked.

“Plus a really good sense of smell,” Allison said. “None of my other senses have changed, but um…” she shrugged her jacket off and pushed up the sleeve on her right arm, and showed them a tiny bruise, smaller in diameter than a dime. “We can add super healing to the list. Last night this was…it was…well actually it was a _hole_ …”

Lydia widened her eyes, but Stiles was the one to ask “What _happened_ after you jumped out the window?”

“Mydadshotmewithanarrow,” Allison said, all in one breath. All three of the others dropped their jaws. Lydia took a quick look around the food court, and leaned forward.

“Do you _really_ want to have this conversation here?” she hissed.

Allison nodded, letting her sleeve fall back down. Scott reached out, and Allison squeezed his hand. “It’s actually harder for people to listen in with all the noise. Just don’t like…start shouting or anything.”

After a deep breath, Allison launched into the story of what had happened the night before, starting with the moment she’d left Lydia’s party.

 

~

 

Stiles was tapping his foot. Or rather, his whole leg was jumping up and down, and tapping his foot against the floor of the food court came as a consequence of that. Like how Allison being shot by her father had come as a consequence of Stiles dragging her and Scott with him into the woods Sunday night.

His shook his head rapidly and made himself stop moving his leg, drumming his fingers on the table instead.

“I’m sorry,” Scott said, when Allison finished her tale of the race through the woods, of Derek and hunters and sneaking back home. His face was stricken. “If I hadn’t gotten in the car with Derek–”

“He would have gotten Allison out there anyway,” Stiles cut in. “Probably some weird werewolf initiation thing. ‘ _Welcome to the world of Things That Go Bump in the Night, here’s a condescending speech and some enemies_.’”

“It wasn’t much of a speech,” Allison said. She had one arm crossed in front of her chest, that hand propping up the other so she could twine one thin strand of hair between her fingers. “And my dad’s not my enemy. He didn’t even know it was _me_.”

“People who try to kill you are generally considered enemies,” Lydia said, giving Allison a concerned look.

Allison’s fingers clenched around her hair on the word _kill_ , and she looked down at the table. “He wasn’t trying to kill me,” she said in a small voice.

“He _shot_ you,” Stiles said, hands coming off the table to gesture in confusion.

“In the _arm_ ,” Allison said, voice growing sharp and head coming up to glare at Stiles. “He taught me archery when I was little,” Allison said. “I know how good he is. If he’d wanted to hit me somewhere fatal, we wouldn’t be having this conversation.”

“Fine,” Stiles said, leaning back in his chair and crossing his arms. Lydia had one hand over her mouth, eyes wide, and Scott looked ill. “Fine,” Stiles repeated. “So he didn’t want to kill you. He just wanted to _hurt_ you.”

“If he hunts werewolves, he must know how we heal,” Allison muttered.

“Bet it still hurt though,” Stiles said, and in the silence that followed, almost regretted the words. Allison was staring at the table again.

After a long, painful moment, Lydia crossed her hands on her lap and took a deep breath. “You’re… _sure_ he didn’t recognize you?”

“It’s the only thing I’m sure of right now,” Allison said. Scott tentatively put a hand on her knee, and she brought hers out of her hair to wrap around his.

“If he ever does…” Lydia began, and broke off to take another deep breath. “If you _ever_ think someone’s realized what you are, leave. Right then. Come find one of us.”

“Because _that_ won’t confirm their suspicions,” Stiles muttered, flicking his empty soda cup over with one finger. It rolled across the table slowly.

“I’m getting you a spare key to my house,” Lydia said, ignoring Stiles’ comment. She reached out and brushed Allison’s hair from her face. “We’re not letting anyone shoot you again. Okay?”

Allison nodded, squeezing her eyes shut for a moment before looking up at Lydia, and then around the whole table. “…thanks.”

 

~

 

By Saturday night, the bruise on her arm had vanished completely, and there were no stings of pain when Allison flexed it. Sunday morning, she looked up the hours of the local archery range, and unpacked her compound bow.

“Going shooting?” Chris asked, when Allison passed him in the hallway, bow and quiver in her arms.

“Yeah,” Allison said. “Something familiar in a new town, you know?”

“I know,” Chris said, with a fond smile and a soft nod. “You want company?”

“Not today,” Allison said, and leaned up on tiptoes to kiss him on the cheek. He kissed her back, on the top of her head.

At the range, Allison discovered that the whistling sound of the arrows made her flinch. She wasn’t sure if it was from her heightened hearing, or from the memory of her father’s arrow flying through the night into her arm. When each arrow hit the target, her arm twinged.

She made herself keep shooting until she stopped flinching.

 

~

 

School took up most of Allison’s attention that week. She was still the new kid, catching up with the curriculum, and her second week as a werewolf wasn’t much quieter, sensory-wise, than the first.

On Wednesday afternoon, Aunt Kate called, interrupting Allison’s math homework.

“How’s my favorite niece?” Kate asked.

“Your favorite niece is great,” Allison said, pushing away from her desk and flopping back onto her bed. “And is also your _only_ niece. Unless there’s some family secret you haven’t told me?” She bit back a wince as soon as she said it.

Kate laughed, a familiar sound that always made Allison grin. “Our family secrets aren’t nearly so _soap opera_ as long lost siblings and missing heirs.”

“Oh, so there _are_ family secrets,” Allison said, letting her own laugh slip into her words. She’d been half hoping Aunt Kate didn’t know anything about werewolves, that it was just her parents. But Kate was so much more like a big sister than an aunt…maybe she could help.

“All families have secrets,” Kate said. “For instance, I know your dad’s middle name.”

“Dad has a middle name?” Allison exclaimed. “I don’t believe you. Next you’ll be saying my _mom_ has a childhood _nickname._ ”

“Unfortunately, if she does, I wouldn’t know it,” Kate said. “Though I would screw a spy to get that information.”

“Kate!”

“Oh come on Allison, don’t tell me you haven’t heard worse from your classmates.”

Allison thought of the unsubtle way Lydia and Jackson would make out in public, of Stiles asking Danny awkward questions, and of all the half-conversations she’d been overhearing at school. “No, you’re right, that was really tame.”

“Oooh, that was a worldly tone,” Kate said. “Are _you_ screwing someone? Do I need to give some poor teenager with great taste a very pointed speech about the consequences of breaking your heart?”

The blush was back. “My heart is _fine_ ,” Allison said. “Scott is a sweetheart, and as far as you know we’ve just held hands and kissed.”

“Oh, kiddo, you gotta live a little.” There was a pause. “So, Scott, huh?”

“Yes, Scott,” Allison said. “Dad’s not a fan of us dating, but he hasn’t been glaring _nearly_ as much as Mom.”

“Well, I’ll be sure to make my approval known when I visit,” Kate said. “Can’t have your parents chasing the poor kid off before you even _screw_.”

“You’re visiting?” Allison asked, excited, and ignoring the comment about sex. Maybe she really _could_ get Aunt Kate to help with the whole werewolf situation; she was always more relaxed about everything than Allison’s parents. “When are you coming?”

 

~

 

By Friday, Allison felt like she was getting the hang of things. Jumping at fewer sounds, pinching her nose shut at less smells. Though maybe that was just from gaining distance from the full moon.

Stiles had been looking into werewolf folklore, on top of his homework. Allison had too, though only sitting on Lydia’s floor with her laptop; she didn’t quite dare use the wireless network at home for this. It would’ve been nice to compare notes. But at lunch they were always surrounded by Lydia and Jackson’s Herd of Beautiful People (Stiles’ term) and thanks to the lacrosse game coming up Saturday, the boys were busy with practice every day after school. Allison hadn’t even found a moment to mention that her aunt would be in Beacon Hills in a week or two.

On Friday, Lydia snagged Allison’s arm after class, and steered her through the parking lot towards Allison’s car. “You know,” she said. “Between all the running and bloodshed and being traumatized, did you ever figure out _why_ Derek Hale smells like blood?”

“…no,” Allison said. To be honest, she’d assumed Derek had left; that he’d considered his Werewolf Welcome Speech (another Stiles term) satisfactorily given, and skipped town to avoid the hunters.

“Do you want to?” Lydia asked. “Because the rumor mill says he picked up mail from a box at the post office yesterday, _and_ isn’t staying anywhere in town, which means he might actually be _living_ at that horror of a house out in the woods. And if you want to figure out what happened to _you_ , it might be a good place to start.”

“That is an excellent idea,” Allison said. She pulled out her car keys and twirled them around her finger. “Are you up for a field trip today, Lydia?”

 

~

 

The two of them stopped at the tree Allison had been pinned to Friday night. The bloodstain had been wiped at with pine needles, not erasing it, but certainly making it less noticeable. The arrow shaft was gone, and they couldn’t find Scott’s inhaler anywhere.

Allison led the way, sniffing out the trails Derek favored; now that she was in the woods, it was infinitely clearer that he’d never left. They stopped just short of the clearing around the Hale house, and Lydia yanked Allison down when the door creaked open and Derek stepped out.

There was a pair of birds having a shrill sparring match above them, and it was loud enough that Allison couldn’t even hear Derek’s footsteps as he walked towards his car, let alone his heartbeat. Hopefully he couldn’t hear her or Lydia either.

When Derek drove away, Allison scrambled up, and Lydia rose from the ground and brushed the dirt off her clothes.

“Come on,” Allison said. “This whole place’s got that stale blood scent. It’s just…really faint.” She honed in on a patch of loose earth about ten feet from the house, and crouched down, sniffing deeply.

“That looks so weird,” Lydia said.

“It works though,” Allison said, looking up and grinning at her. “There’s definitely something dead under here. Human.”

Lydia paled and put her hands over her mouth, eyes wide with shock, and Allison suddenly felt bad for grinning. She pushed herself back up and wiped the dirt off her hands. “Sorry, sorry,” Allison said.

“Allison, they never found the other half of that body,” Lydia said. “Oh my god, what if this is it? What if Derek killed someone? Oh my god, Scott got in a car with him. Allison, Scott got picked up from _my party_ by a _murderer_.”

“We don’t know he’s a murderer though,” Allison said quickly, hands fluttering around Lydia’s shoulders, and then patting one awkwardly. “I think he buried whoever this is, but that, that doesn’t mean he _killed_ them, I mean, he saved me when I got shot, maybe this is just…complicated.”

“Complicated,” Lydia echoed disbelievingly.

 

~

 

Scott was still under curfew, and his mom had Friday night off work, which meant the odds were against him being able to sneak out. Lydia already had a standing date with Jackson, which she really couldn’t cancel, since she’d already done that last Saturday.

So after her parents went to bed that night, Allison crept out her window and ran down the street to a couple blocks away, where Stiles was waiting in the Jeep.

“You sure you’re okay with this?” Allison asked. She rolled down the windows of the Jeep once they were away from town, letting the wind into her hair.

“It’s not like I’m gonna make it off the bench tomorrow,” Stiles said. “I can miss sleeping tonight.”

Allison laughed, and leaned a little farther out the window. The night air was full of smells left over from the day, turning cold, and they were going by so _fast._ Stiles grabbed her shoulder and yanked her back into her seat.

“Hilarious as watching you act like a St. Bernard is, I do _not_ wanna be the one to tell Scott you got your head taken off by a stop sign.”

“That’s just an urban legend,” Allison said, but she rolled her window back up halfway, to lower the temptation.

“I’ve read the accident reports.”

Stiles made her roll the window the rest of the way up when they parked the Jeep outside the Beacon Hills Nature Preserve.

“This doesn’t seem like a high car-theft area,” Allison said, hoisting her shovel over her shoulder.

“But it is a high _squirrel_ area,” Stiles pointed out, his own shovel shoved under his armpit.

Once in the woods, they walked quickly, sure of their destination. Allison was on high alert, listening for anyone else around. Or any _thing_ ; Derek claimed he hadn’t bit her, and if he’d been telling the truth…then hunters weren’t the only dangerous ones around.

Derek’s car was gone when they arrived, but Allison had Stiles wait in the undergrowth for a minute while she circled the house, sniffing and listening.

Nothing.

Allison called Stiles over to the patch of dirt she’d smelled blood under that afternoon, and they started digging.

Whatever was down there didn’t smell human anymore, and Allison wondered if she’d been mistaken earlier.  Eventually their shovels hit a bundle of burlap; when they got the dirt off of enough of the bundle to unwrap it, and saw the canine form inside, the different smells made sense.

“It’s a werewolf,” Allison said.

“It looks more like a wolf-wolf,” Stiles said, angling his head to the side and looking down at the poor dead thing.

“Yeah, but this grave smelled human this afternoon,” Allison said. Some impulse made her reach down into the grave and stroke the fur. “Do _you_ know who bit me?” she murmured under her breath.

“Okay, I can buy that,” Stiles said. “But how can something that’s already _dead_ shape shift…” something had caught his eye, and he scrambled around to the far side of the grave. “Hold on…” Stiles pulled up a flowering plant by its roots, and found that it was attached to a length of thin rope much like the stuff that had held the burlap closed.

As Stiles slowly pulled more of the rope out of the dirt, they saw that it was circling the grave, closer and closer with each loop, making a spiral. When Stiles got the final length out of the ground, the fur under Allison’s fingers shifted, and she jerked back.

“You’re right,” Stiles said, as Allison tried not to look at the dead woman’s eyes. “Definitely a werewolf.”

 

~

 

Stiles wanted to be there when Derek got arrested, but Allison said they didn’t have a good reason to be out in the woods, didn’t have an alibi for finding the body aside from “I smelled blood under four feet of dirt.”

So they found one of the few remaining pay-phones in Beacon Hills, and called in an anonymous tip instead.

 

~

 

Allison _meant_ to go to the lacrosse game that Saturday and cheer with Lydia, she really did, but every time she looked in the mirror she got flashes of the dead woman’s face, and when she closed her eyes she felt the dirt-coated fur against her fingers shift into dirt-coated skin.

So Allison told her mother she felt ill and spent the rest of the evening after dinner curled up on her bed, necklaces and scarves in a pile next to her. Whenever the sensation came up, Allison reached out and picked up a necklace, feeling the different metals and pendants, or a scarf, running the material over her fingers, chasing away the feeling of fur and skin and death.

“You have a visitor,” Victoria said, opening the door, and Allison sat up, glad her pile of things was on her other side. Lydia stood in the doorway, and Allison’s mother smiled at both of them and then walked away.

“You weren’t at the game,” Lydia said, in a voice half-teasing, half-worried. “And you’re not answering your phone.”

“Sorry,” Allison said. She snagged her phone off of her bedside table, and flipped it open. A slew of missed calls and texts from Lydia, and a very recent text from Scott asking if she was okay, and one from Stiles that just said _PROBLEM_.

“Your mom said you felt sick,” Lydia said, sitting on the bed next to Allison. She glanced over at the pile of jewelry and scarves, and raised an eyebrow. “Is this related to your extracurricular activities?” she asked.

“Yeah,” Allison said. “Please don’t ask.”

“All right,” Lydia said. She nudged Allison with her shoulder. “You should call Scott before he panics or something. He spent the whole game on the bench, looking around the stands.”

“Oh geez,” Allison said. She scrolled through her contacts for Scott, and hit the _call_ button. He picked up on the first ring, and asked if she was okay. Lydia got off the bed and wandered through Allison’s room, examining her things.

“I’m fine,” Allison said. “Just didn’t want…didn’t want to deal with the crowd, I guess. I’m really sorry I missed your game.”

“Yeah, I had a thrilling role, keeping the bench from icing over.” There was a grin in his voice. “What you _really_ missed out on was using super-hearing to hear Stiles trash-talk the opposition. And our team too, since Greenberg tripped over his own stick and Jackson hogged the ball all night.”

“That is a true tragedy,” Allison said, as solemnly as possible, before giggling.

“I should leave my phone out next time!” Scott said. “Then you won’t be in the crowd, _and_ you can hear everything. Well, as long as coach doesn’t notice. Sometimes he confiscates cell phones to use as practice lacrosse balls if he catches us with them.”

“You don’t have to risk your phone for me,” Allison said quickly.

“Yeah, but I like making you laugh,” Scott said, and Allison blushed. After a few more minutes of chatter, and an exchange of kissing sounds, they reluctantly hung up.

“That was way too saccharine,” Lydia said, putting Allison’s I-pod down. “You two disgust me.” But she was smiling.

“Do I need to call Stiles too?” Allison asked.

“Hm? Oh, that,” Lydia said, when Allison showed her the text from Stiles with the word _PROBLEM_. “No, he told me what the deal was, I can tell you.”

“You came over after the game to give me information from Stiles?” Allison asked, scrunching her eyebrows together.

“No, I came see if you were okay,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes. “Stiles just drove me over, and told me what was up in the car. He’s in your driveway, actually.”

“What?” Allison bounced off the bed and darted to the window. Yep. There was the Jeep.

“Well, it’s not like I drove my own car to the game,” Lydia said, shrugging. “And Jackson’s parents were expecting him home, so it’s not like I could ask him to drive me here and then just wait around until whatever was going on with you got figured out. I mean, what if you were suffering from some sort of delayed moon reaction or something?” Lydia shrugged again.

“Thanks,” Allison said. She let out a huff of air and turned away from the window, walking back towards the bed. “So what was the info, then?”

“Medical examiner determined that our Jane Doe’s cause of death was from an animal attack,” Lydia said. There was a bit of a tremble in her voice, an unintended one Allison knew. “And since everyone thinks Derek is human, he’s completely off the hook. Oh, and our Jane Doe isn’t actually a Jane Doe anymore. She’s Laura Hale. Stiles says she’s Derek’s sister.”

Allison gulped. “Lydia, Stiles’ and my scent is all over that place,” she said. “Derek’s gonna know we’re the ones that turned him in. And now he’s out of jail, and Stiles’ is just sitting in the driveway by _himself_?”

Allison was already at the window again, preparing to jump out, when Lydia put her hand on Allison’s shoulder. “Derek knows your dad’s a hunter,” Lydia said. “Pretty sure your driveway is one of the safest places in town right now.”


	5. Chapter 5

Since Derek had been released from jail on Saturday, Allison had been driving Scott to school in the morning. Biking all alone with a werewolf that had semi-kidnapped him once running around, possibly pissed at Allison and Stiles, didn’t seem like a good idea. Scott had absolutely no objections to this; it had mostly meant a very nice week of getting up early and making out in Allison’s Mazda before class. On Thursday make-outs had been skipped in favor of finishing the book reviews for English class both of them had forgotten about.

After lacrosse practice in the afternoon, Stiles got the job of driving Scott home. Or driving Scott to the animal clinic, and doing his homework in the lobby until Scott’s shift was over.

 Scott had been nervous at work for a couple days, back when school started again, a little worried that his boss would ask him what had _happened_ to that rabies vaccine. But Dr. Deaton had provided an answer for him; “Did you break one of the vials during inventory, Scott?”

“Sorry,” Scott had said. “I meant to tell you. Um. Is this coming out of my paycheck?”

Dr. Deaton had glanced over at Scott’s embarrassed, worried face, and smiled. “Don’t worry so much. I’m just glad you cleaned up the glass.”

And Scott had gone back to feeling relaxed at work. Dogs and cats didn’t give Scott grief for staying on the lacrosse team despite spending most of his time on the bench, they never make snide comments about single moms, and they didn’t give pop quizzes.

They contracted strange diseases, and got into fights with other pets, and hit by cars. But Dr. Deaton showed Scott all the ways to fix those things, or at least make them better for a while. And when dogs and cats were pleased with you, they made it clear. After changing the water bowls and making the food-rounds in the overnight cat room, for instance, Scott liked to stand still for a minute, and let the mass purring wash through him.

 

~

 

Friday morning, Scott woke up before his alarm, from his phone buzzing on the floor next to his bed. He scrambled out from under his sheets and grabbed phone, to find that it was a text message that had set it off, not an incoming call.

_Are you ok?_ Allison had sent him.

_Totally awesome_ , Scott sent back, and then his alarm clock sounded, sending him diving to turn it off.

Melissa was asleep on the couch in the living room, having just kicked off her shoes and dropped her purse before pretty much passing out in her scrubs. She’d been filling in for a lot of her coworkers lately, taking on extra shifts. Scott pulled a blanket over her, and then tip-toed into the kitchen to make himself breakfast.

Allison’s Mazda was already in the driveway, with Allison leaning against the hood, looking miserable. She hadn’t put on any makeup, which was weird for a school day, and she was wearing the hoodie he’d loaned her the week before, instead of any of her nice jackets. As soon as Scott off his porch, Allison wrapped him in a hug.

“Hey,” Scott said, folding his arms around her back. She hid her face in the crook between his neck and shoulder, and breathed deep, shaking a bit. Scott kept one arm around her lower back, and raised the other one a little higher to rub circles between her shoulders. “Hey, what’s wrong?”

“I dreamt I killed you,” Allison said quietly. “And I woke up with blood in my hair.”

 

~

 

Lydia was staring across the cafeteria at Jackson, who was staring back, when Lydia very deliberately sat down at the lunch table with Allison, Scott, and Stiles. Jackson rolled his eyes and sat down on the other side of the cafeteria with Danny and their friends. No one got up to join Lydia, which she filed away as something to be disappointed about later.

“So is that why you drove your car today?” Stiles asked, without finishing the mouthful of french fries he’d been eating when Lydia arrived. Scott looked confused, and Allison wasn’t paying attention. “Cause like, you always show up in Jackson’s Porsche and you didn’t today and I didn’t even think you _had_ your own car and–”

“Yes, we broke up,” Lydia says quickly, cutting into Stiles’ flow of words. “And no, we’re not talking about it. Nor are we talking about my car. And if I have to look at your half-chewed food ever again, I’m going to vomit.”

Stiles slapped a hand over his mouth, and audibly forced down the french fries.

Lydia had spent her time between classes gathering rumors and information from their peers, and knew for sure that a) a man was violently attacked on the school bus, b) he was now in the hospital, and c) when he was being loaded onto the stretcher and started screaming, Allison ran out of the class she was in and vomited in a garbage can in the hallway, not even making it to the bathroom.

It didn’t seem like very good topic of conversation for lunch, though, even if it was all rather important. So Lydia didn’t say anything until Stiles got a text letting them know the injured man’s name, Garrison Myers. He was Scott’s old bus driver.

At that point Lydia brushed her hands together, and informed the group that they’d be making a visit to the Hale property after school. There was no game this weekend, and Coach Finstock hadn’t scheduled practice for Friday afternoon.

“I’ve got work right after school,” Scott said.

“Okay, fine, we’ll go after that,” Lydia said, waving one hand imperiously. She knew it was an imperious wave. She’d _practiced_. “The rest of us can do research and _homework_ while you bandage up poor wounded little puppies and kitties.”

Allison was finally looking up now, straight at Lydia.

“Oh, don’t give me that look,” Lydia said, pouting. “We’ll be fine. And we need answers.”

 

~

 

The left Lydia’s car at her house, and took Allison’s Mazda and Stiles’ Jeep out to Scott’s place, since it was closest to the woods, and then all piled into the Jeep to get as far as possible into the woods before they had to walk.

Stiles parked the Jeep pointing back into town, to facilitate skedaddling as fast as possible if this went pear-shaped. Lydia was projecting confidence that going to talk to a werewolf who may or may not have killed (and bisected) a woman, and may have attacked a bus driver (unless that was Allison), and kind-of-sort-of-not really kidnapped Scott to get Allison away from Lydia’s party, would be a walk in the park. Lydia was projecting confidence so hard it wrapped back around into nervousness.

Talking to Derek Hale wasn’t really something any of them _wanted_ to do. But since there wasn’t a good way to check credibility on their internet and library sources for werewolf info, talking to Derek seemed like their best bet.

Scott let them know on the drive over that Sheriff Stilinski had talked to Scott’s boss today, Dr. Deaton. It seemed the bus driver had been attacked by a wolf, but by one that exhibited abnormalities in its behavior.

Derek was already standing on the ruined porch of his family’s ruined house, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket, when the four teenagers walked into the clearing.

 

~

 

No one knew how to start. Allison kept her eyes on Derek, who was watching the four of them and looking almost amused. Scott stood on Allison’s left side, baseball bat in one hand. Lydia was to Allison’s right, and Allison could hear her heart beating fast. Stiles was on Lydia’s far side, standing just the littlest bit ahead of her.

“What happened to the bus driver?” Scott asked, after a minute or so. All of their heartbeats sped up when he spoke, slowing back down when Derek just raised his eyebrows instead of, say, attacking them.

“I don’t know,” Derek said.

“Is there a way we can find out?” Allison asked, because this was her mess, and she should be the one trying to find answers. Well. _Probably_ her mess.

Derek nodded. “Go back. Listen to your senses. If you were there, you’ll remember what happened.”

They stared for a moment longer, before Lydia said “And what does ‘ _listen to your senses’_ mean, exactly?”

Derek turned his deadpan glare from Allison to Lydia, didn’t even move his head, just his eyes, and gave her a _look_. “It’s a wolf thing,” he said. “She’ll figure it out.”

Then he stepped back through the open door of the ruined house, and none of them felt like following him inside to ask for further clarification.

 

~

 

Now that they had actually _talked_ to Derek, and no one had died, Stiles’ wound up nerves decided the best thing to concentrate on was Lydia Martin sitting in his Jeep. Sitting. In. His. Jeep. In the _front seat_ of his Jeep, _right next to him_.

Even with Allison and Scott in the back making soothing noises at each other, it seemed like a really good moment to, like, ask her to a movie, or ice-skating, or _something_. Okay, so, she only broke up with Jackson the day before. And there were already umpteen bazillion rumors going around the school about _why_. That she wouldn’t date him until the lacrosse team made it to the state championship. Or she was trying to graduate a year early, and needed more time for schoolwork. Or that she and the new girl were more than just friends.

Maybe he should wait a couple days?

No, screw that, a bus driver had been horribly mauled by some douchebag werewolf, and the four of them were in so deep Stiles could almost hear the howling. _Carpe diem_ , grab life by the balls, ask the girl out already, Stilinski.

Stiles took a deep breath and glanced over at Lydia, licked his lips. Took another deep breath, opened his mouth. “So, since, uh–”

“The police took that bus to the impound lot, right?” Lydia asked, cutting Stiles off.

“Um,” Stiles said. “Yeah, I heard my dad talking to–”

“Great,” Lydia said, smiling brightly. “We’re breaking in.”

 

~

 

Late that night, Allison climbed over the chain-link fence around the impound yard and leapt down, rolling as she hit the ground, coming to her feet a few meters from the fence. She paused halfway to the bus, taking a moment to listen to her surroundings.

The sound of howling hit her, and she jerked, looking around for movement, for the source. She felt sheets against her skin instead of the night air, and then carpet against her bare feet. But she was wearing sneakers…

In the Jeep on the other side of the fence, her friends’ heartbeats were steady. That howl couldn’t be real– or rather, it wasn’t real _now_. Allison shook her head and kept walking, shoving down the memory of being called into the night.

Allison put her hand up to push the bus door open, and saw a flash of Scott pounding against it, wheezing too hard to breath. She shoved that down too; it hadn’t even been real in the past. Scott was sitting in the Jeep with Lydia and Stiles, _perfectly fine_. She’d never attacked him.

“Okay, Allison,” she quietly told herself. “Listen to your senses.”

She walked down the narrow aisle until she was in the middle of the bus, and closed her eyes. The bus hadn’t been cleaned yet, the area beyond the _Crime Scene, Do Not Cross_ tape strewn with little evidence tags, and she could smell the sticky, drying blood in the back. She inhaled slowly through her nose, trying to find any scents underneath the blood.

Dried sweat on the seats, dozens of brands of soap, even more shampoos…Allison made a disgusted face. The bus had all the smells from school, cramped together even more, and _stale_. She took a few more steps towards the back, stopping when she touched the tape.

Herself– she smelled herself, she had been here –along with a human, Mr. Myers, and another werewolf. She had her arms crossed against her chest, not wanting to touch anything, but felt one arm swing out to the side, shoving someone, felt her claws strike out…then the memory of _being_ struck, and her own blood splattering against the window.

Another deep breath, and she was on her knees, overwhelmed by her senses. _I’m not fighting anymore_ , she tried to tell herself, as adrenaline coursed through her. _This already happened, no one’s in danger_ –

The urgent honking of the Jeep’s horn get Allison to her feet again, and she stumbled out of the bus, running when she saw the guard’s flashlight behind her. Out of the bus, away from the smells, she quickly regained her control and raced up another impounded car, leaping back over the fence. Lydia was holding the door open, and Allison dove in.

 

~

 

Stiles threw the Jeep into reverse as soon as Allison was inside, before she’d even finished climbing past Lydia into the backseat next to Scott. He did _not_ want to get caught interfering with an investigation, thank you very much. Stiles spun the car around as the back door was slammed shut, and didn’t slow down until they were several roads away.

“I didn’t attack him!” Allison told them, smiling from ear to ear, bouncing in her seat in the Jeep. Stiles had thought she looked pretty freaked out when she first ran towards them, but apparently her adrenaline rush had turned into an adrenaline _high_ , and he wasn’t gonna begrudge her that, even if she was kicking the back of his seat in her excitement.

“It wasn’t me!” Allison continued. “I mean, I was _there_ , but I didn’t attack him! I was trying to protect him!”

“From what?” Stiles asked, but then Allison’s cell phone went off, and she hauled it out of her pocket like it was on fire.

“Hi Dad,” Allison said, voice still radiating good will towards the world. “What’s up? Sleepover at Lydia’s, remember? Yes, I remember the curfew. Yes, I promise we won’t leave her house until sun-up. Yes Dad. I promise. I love you too.”

“Sleepover at Lydia’s, huh?” Stiles said, when the phone call was over. Lydia gave him a scathing look from the front passenger seat. “Right, right,” Stiles said, trying (and failing) not to flinch under the death glare. “Girls only, solid excuse for when Daddy notices she isn’t home, etcetera, etcetera, shutting up.”

That lasted for about half a second, before Stiles remembered his question from before Allison’s cell phone had gone off.

“Whaaaaaaaat were you protecting the bus driver from?” Stiles asked, glancing in the rearview mirror, to where Scott and Allison were cuddled together in the back.

“Another wolf,” Allison said.

“Derek?” Lydia asked.

Allison shook her head. “No. It was different, looked different, sounded different. _Smelled_ different, angrier, more familiar.”

“There’s a wolf you’re more familiar with than Derek?” Stiles asked, incredulous. “There’s a wolf that’s _angrier_ than Derek?”

Allison nodded. “From the night I got bit. Derek was telling the truth, he didn’t bite me. It was this other wolf. Which means maybe Derek was probably telling the truth about not killing…anyone.” She was smiling, voice rising with excitement. “He buried his sister, buried Laura Hale, he didn’t kill her. Didn’t bite me. Didn’t attack the bus driver, which is great, and neither did I–”

“Which is _awesome_ ,” Stiles cut in.

“Totally awesome,” Scott added, and kissed Allison on the cheek.

“This is all great,” Lydia said. “Really, I’m happy neither Allison, nor Derek, is in the habit of attacking people. But we have a werewolf out there that _is_ , and no idea why Allison was out there last night in the first place.”

That was when Scott’s cell phone went off with its text-message chime. “It’s from my mom,” he told them. “Mr. Myers was my bus driver, back when I…so I asked her to let me know if…” he trailed off, staring at his phone.

“…Scott?” Allison asked, worry creeping into her voice.

“He died.”


	6. Chapter 6

Sunday night, a gunshot interrupted Allison’s dreams, and she sat bolt upright in bed. A moment later there was a howl that resonated in her bones, and she was out the window before even thinking, still in her pyjamas, clutching her running shoes.

As Allison crammed her feet into the shoes, she mentally thanked Lydia for the suggestion to start sleeping in her sports bra, after the bus incident made it clear Allison was sleep-running. She heard her dad get into his SUV and leave.

Allison followed.

 

~

 

“…so it sounded like my dad and Aunt Kate know about at least two out of us three werewolves in town,” Allison told her friends the next morning at school. They were clustered around Allison’s Mazda in the parking lot; she’d sent a text to Stiles and Lydia when she’s gotten up, and then driven Scott to school. He’d talked the whole way–  had taken one look at Allison’s face, and then spent the entire drive trying to get her to laugh.

He’d succeeded about a block away from school, with a story about Stiles sabotaging Jackson’s biology project in 7th grade, after Jackson had ‘accidentally’ elbowed Stiles’ pea-plant off the science classroom’s windowsill.

“But I’m not sure which two,” Allison added. “Aunt Kate shot one of the others.”

“Shot it dead?” Stiles asked, his voice a mixture of relieved and appalled.

Allison shook her head, which felt heavy. _Everything_ felt heavy. Aunt Kate wasn’t going to help Allison; she was just like Dad. “She said something about forty-eight hours or a little less,” Allison explained. “And that she wasn’t sure if it was ‘ _the alpha_ ’ or not.”

“Wait, since when have alphas been involved in this?” Stiles asked.

“Wolves have alphas,” Scott said. “Makes sense that werewolves do too.”

“But are werewolf alphas different from regular ones?” Lydia mused.

“Maybe Derek knows,” Scott suggested.

“Man, getting information from him is like pulling teeth,” Stiles said.

“We should check on him after class anyway,” Allison said. She felt guilty for last night, for not looking for the wounded werewolf, for running back home scared. “He’s probably the one that got shot.”

 

~

 

They didn’t have to find Derek though, because it looked like he found them first; when they got out of class, Derek was passed out leaning on the hood of Stiles’ Jeep. He growled when Stiles poked him, but at least he woke up.

“What are you doing here?” Lydia snapped. She and Allison had parked on either side of the Jeep that morning, and other students were starting to give Derek weird looks.

Derek pushed himself away from the hood of the Jeep. He had to let go of his arm to do so, and everyone recoiled from the messy wound. “I need a second bullet.”

“What, getting shot _once_ wasn’t enough?” Stiles said. Derek glared at him, and Stiles held his hands up.

“That’s spreading like an infection,” Scott said, edging closer and looking at the blackened veins of Derek’s arm.

“It’s not an _infection_ ,” Derek snapped.

“Poison?” Lydia asked.

Derek nodded once, sharply.

“You don’t carry antidotes for this sort of thing?” Lydia asked, quirking her eyebrow.

“Kate Argent makes her own ammunition,” Derek said, glaring at Lydia, and not even glancing at Allison, who had jumped a bit when he confirmed it was her aunt that had shot him. “I won’t know what she used unless you _get me_ another _bullet_.”

“Look, okay,” Lydia said, glancing around, taking in the number of kids who were staring at Derek. “Scott, is there like a private room for skittish pets or something at that place you work?”

“Yeah,” Scott said. “But wouldn’t the hospital be better?”

“If it was better, I’d _be_ there.”

“Okay,” Lydia said, taking a deep breath. “Stiles, Scott, get him to the clinic. Allison and I will go scavenger hunting through luggage and meet you there. Okay?”

 

~

 

They left Lydia’s car at school, peeling out of the parking lot in Allison’s instead, heading for her house. Her parents had said they’d be taking Aunt Kate to a very late lunch, so if they were lucky no one would be home.

Luck was in; both of her parents’ cars were gone, and Allison’s long cry of “I’m hoooooooOOOOOoome,” produced no response. They looked in the armory in the garage first, Allison sure that her dad would want to keep any weaponry in the house locked up.

“Does your aunt actually follow your dad’s rules, though?” Lydia asked, after half an hour’s fruitless search in the garage. They tried the guest room next, and Lydia smirked when they found the bag of ammunition shoved half under the bed. Once they got to the relevant box inside though, Lydia realized they had a problem.

“Nordic Blue Monkshood,” Lydia said, flipping the small box closed again and translating the writing. “Text that to the boys, will you? Ask if Derek actually needs a bullet or if the name is enough information.”

“Okay,” Allison said, pulling out her phone and sending the text. They waited, listening for the sound of anyone coming home, and jumped when Allison’s phone buzzed. “Derek says he _definitely_ needs one of the bullets.”

Lydia inhaled slowly, once, twice, then looked over at Allison. “Each bullet has its own little hole in this case. Allison, your aunt is _going_ to notice one’s missing.”

Allison clutched at her forearm, still staring at the bag of ammunition. Then she inhaled slowly, like Lydia had, but shakier, and nodded. “Take it,” Allison said, left hand now rubbing up and down on her right arm. “If Derek needs one to live, then, Derek needs one to live. Take the bullet.”

Lydia withdrew one of the bullets and slid it into the front pocket of her jeans, and straightened everything they had disarrayed in the ammunition bag.

“…I think I hear the car,” Allison said.  She hauled Lydia to her feet , and rushed her toward the front door, saying “We might be able to get out before they–”

The front door swung open, and the girls skidded to a stop. Chris Argent and a woman with a strong family resemblance were standing there, Chris still with his hand on the knob.

“Hey Dad,” Allison said, giving a little finger wave and a bigger smile.

“Hey sweetheart,” Chris said, stepping inside and hugging his daughter. Lydia smiled and winked at him, because it was fun to watch Chris Argent try not to look mortified whenever she flirted with him. Then she caught the eye of the woman standing in the doorway, who was watching them all with a smile that would have set Lydia at ease if she hadn’t seen it in the mirror so often.

“You must be Kate!” Lydia said, turning her flirty smile into a star-struck beam. Allison and Chris were in between her and Kate, so Lydia didn’t have to try and shake her hand or offer a hug or anything, just her smile.

“I am,” Kate Argent said, looking pleased to be recognized. She looked at Lydia, still smiling, but now squinting a little too, like she was trying to puzzle her out. “You’re not…Scotty, are you?” Kate asked, and Lydia laughed while Allison choked on air and Chris just raised his eyebrows.

“Oh no,” Lydia said. “I’m much more refined than Scott.” Allison and Chris had stepped aside so Kate could come indoor, and Lydia held out her hand. “I’m Lydia Martin.”

“Oooh,” Kate drawled, nodding in understanding. She shook Lydia’s hand. “I heard you really helped our little Allison get settled in to her newest school. Thank you.”

“It’s a pleasure,” Lydia chirped, and then adjusted her book bag. “Speaking of school though, Allison and I were just heading out. We’ve got a research project to work on.”

“Well, come back soon, I’d like to get to know you better,” Kate said. “Any friend of Allison’s is a friend of mine.”

“I’d like that,” Lydia said, and then snagged Allison’s arm and flounced out the door, with Chris Argent calling a reminder of the town curfew behind them.

 

~

 

Scott didn’t _like_ having Derek in the animal clinic. It wasn’t like he wanted to leave Derek on the street, or even that he minded being _around_ Derek– he’d been perfectly polite, if rather quiet, company when he’d given Scott a ride home from Lydia’s party –but his presence was making the cats and dogs upset.

“Are you _sure_ you don’t want antiseptic for that?” Scott asked, when Stiles smacked Derek’s hand away from the bullet wound. Derek kept poking at it.

Derek rolled his eyes rather than answering.

“Dude, is that stuff still spreading?” Stiles asked. He leaned forward to peer at Derek’s arm, and then reared back, covering his nose and flapping his hand. “Oh my God, it _reeks_.”

“That’s a bad sign,” Scott said. “Look, if the girls don’t get back soon, we really should go to a hospital. We have to stop the spread before it reaches your heart.”

“No hospitals,” Derek said. His eye scanned the room. “You have a bone saw here, right?”

“Oh my _God_ we are not _cutting off_ your arm,” Stiles said, picking up on the implication before Scott. “No way, we are not doing that-”

“We miss anything fun?” Lydia asked, opening the door.

“Nah,” Stiles said, pulling away from Derek and grinning. As soon as Allison stepped into the room, all the in-patients started raising a din. Apparently one werewolf in the building was upsetting, but two was a nightmare.

“Why don’t you see about calming them down, Scott?” Lydia asked, smiling brightly. Derek leaned his elbows on the exam table, attention fixed on the bullet Lydia was holding.

“Yeah,” Scott said. He paused to hug Allison on his way out the door. “Everything go okay?”

“Just fine,” Allison said, and gave him a kiss.

 

~

 

As soon as Scott was out of the room, Lydia dropped her smile, and turned towards Derek. When she got close, he reached for the bullet, but she jerked it away.

“I need you to promise us something first,” Lydia said, while Stiles and Allison stared at her. Well, Allison was giving her a puzzled look, and Stiles was keeping one eye on Derek. “Allison put her neck on the line with her aunt, with her own family, getting this bullet for you. I need you to promise that after this, you’ll cut out the ‘ _oh, it’s wolf thing, she’ll figure it out’_ **_bullshit_** and actually give us some answers when we ask for them.”

“Lydia, it’s okay,” Allison said. “He saved me that first night in the woods, this is just…evening things out.”

“It was his fault you were out there in the first place,” Lydia said, not taking her eyes off Derek. “Not leaving you stuck to a tree was the least he could do.” She narrowed her eyes.  “If you’re not willing to _explain_ more of this crazy werewolf shit, we really don’t have any reason to keep you alive. No reason to not just…let you die.” She gave a tiny shrug.

“You’re…lying,” Derek said. His word were choppy, and he was clutching his bloodied arm again.

“What makes you say that?” Lydia asked, eyebrows going up.

“Heartbeat.”

“You know heart rate is something lie-detectors use?” Lydia asked, still holding the bullet in the air, carefully on the far side of the table from Derek. “Totally human invention, totally fallible. People have been finding ways to cheat them since they were invented, and the best way is just by being stressed out enough to keep throwing up false positives. You think being in a small room with an angry man that smells like death doesn’t stress me out? You think I’m lying about letting you die?”

She leaned in a little, looking straight into Derek’s bloodshot eyes. “Do you _really_ want to find out?”

There was a long, tense moment. Then Derek looked away, nodded, and said “I’ll answer your questions.”

Lydia handed him the bullet.

 

~

 

Allison chewed on her knuckles while Derek opened the bullet, and burned the contents. When he smashed the ashes onto his wound and _ground them in_ , Allison flinched and bit down hard enough to draw blood.

Then Derek was on the floor, making noises of pain that made Allison feel like her skull was cracking. _My aunt did this_ , she thought, as Lydia grabbed her wrist and pulled her hand away from her mouth. Allison just bit down on her lip instead as the black poison withdrew from Derek’s arm, shrinking back to the original entry point before vanishing entirely. _My aunt did this, and the only problem Dad had was that it would make finding the alpha harder._

“Is he okay?” Scott asked, peering around the door frame, as Derek pushed himself to his feet. The noise from the overnight room had been soothed down to just a few nervous growls, instead of the meowing, barking cacophony of earlier.

“Aside from the agonizing pain,” Derek said, tone sharp. Stiles started to say something, but Lydia held her hand up– she’d dropped Allison’s wrist at some point, and Allison hadn’t noticed –and Stiles snapped his mouth shut.

“Scott,” Lydia said. “Is your boss going to be back anytime soon? We’ve got quite a few things to talk with Derek about.”

“Not today,” Scott said, coming the rest of the way into the room. He caught sight of Allison’s bloodied knuckles and darted over, picking her hand. He didn’t say anything, just squeezed her hand between his two and looked at her with worried eyes. She tried to smile reassuringly, and failed.

“Okay, so, um, should I just get the ball rolling?” Stiles asked the room at large.

“Start what rolling?” Scott asked, giving him a confused look.

“Derek’s agreed to answer our werewolf-related questions,” Lydia said. “Without his usual dose of ambiguity and air of mystery.”

“Oh,” Scott said. He smiled. “That’s awesome. Thanks dude!”

Derek snorted and shook his head, leaning his elbows on the table.

“First things first,” Lydia said, crossing her arms and leaning against the wall. “In werewolf terms, what’s an alpha?”

“A pack leader,” Derek said, looking up at her with narrowed eyes. “A pack _maker_.”

“Maker,” Stiles echoed back. He made a gathering motion with his hands. “Like, making how? Taking little lonely orphan wolfies and giving them a home? Or making people _into_ wolves?”

“Both,” Derek said. He looked over at Allison. “That’s what bit you. A beta like you or me could never turn someone.”

“Are there other differences between betas and alphas?” Scott asked.

“Yeah, there are,” Allison said slowly, thinking back to her memories from the bus. Scott looked at her, and squeezed her hand. “I mean, if that thing on the bus with me was typical, for an alpha. It was…way bigger, and totally covered in fur, barely human anymore.”

Derek was nodding as Allison spoke.

“Hey, speaking of the bus,” Stiles interjected. “What was up with that whole thing? Why’d Allison get called out or whatever, just to fight? Was it some weird pack initiation thing? Invitation to Lycanthropic Fight Club?”

“Made werewolves have to hunt with the pack to bond properly,” Derek said.

“Hunt…people?” Lydia asked, a nervous tremor in her voice detectable to Allison, and probably Derek, but not Scott or Stiles.

“Not usually,” Derek said, with a minuscule shrug. “If you really fought _against_ the alpha that bit you, instead of with him…”

Allison nodded, hand withdrawing from Scott’s grasp to rise to her mouth again. He wrapped his arm around her shoulders.

“He’ll probably kill you next time,” Derek told her. “If you don’t join his side.”

“Well that’s awful,” Stiles said. “That is going on the list of _Things To Avoid_.”

“That’s not gonna happen,” Scott said, his arm curled tighter around her. Allison reached out her free hand, and Scott took it, making a barrier between themselves and the world. “We’re not gonna _let_ that happen.”

Stiles rubbed a hand over his head quickly. “I mean…wait hold on, you said ‘ _made werewolves’_. Are there other kinds?

“Born wolves,” Derek said. “Like me.”

“So, okay, you’re a beta, and Allison’s a beta,” Stiles said, tapping his fingers against his leg. “And you’re a born wolf, and she’s not, so _what_ kind of wolf you are isn’t related to _why_ you’re a wolf.”

Derek nodded.

“So what the whole alpha thing?” Scott asked. “How does that work?

“A beta becomes an alpha when they take that power from an existing alpha,” Derek said.

“Take as in…kill?” Lydia asked. “Because that seems to be a theme today.”

Another nod from Derek.

Allison dropped her bloodied hand from her mouth. “Is that what happened to your sister?” she asked quietly. “Was she an alpha?”

“Another wolf would never have cut her in half like that!” Derek snarled, eyes flashing blue and fang showing. Lydia’s crossed arms tightened, and Scott and Allison jumped back. Stiles jumped back too, and tripped over his own feet, landing on his ass.

“That was postmortem,” Stiles said from the floor. “Like, _way_ postmortem. The autopsy report said actual cause of death was animal attack. They even found wolf hairs on her body. That’s why we thought it was _you_.”

That produced a long, tense silence, broken by Derek. “Do you have any _other_ questions, or are we done here?”

“Is there way to control transformations?” Allison asked.

“If you want to call the wolf,” Derek said, pushing himself away from the table. “Tap into your anger.”

“I was thinking more…how do I _not_ wolf out and attack people,” Allison clarified.

“Calm down,” Derek said.

Stiles, still sitting on the floor, snorted. “Yeah, calming down once the wolf comes out to play is a _total_ piece of cake. Real helpful, dude.”

“Better than nothing,” Allison said, with a sigh and shrug. Scott slipped his arm from her shoulders, and started unconsciously rubbing circles on her back.

“Why was this so hard to tell us?” Scott asked, tilting his head. “You got Allison away from the party so she wouldn’t hurt anybody, and then you just ignore her once the full moon’s over.”

Derek didn’t answer. Lydia uncrossed her arms and put her fists on her hips. “Are you going back on your promise already? I was hoping to get at least a _day_ of clarity with that.”

“I don’t trust Argents,” Derek said finally, looking away from the group.

“I’m having some trust issues with them myself,” Allison said.

“I don’t trust Argent _women_ ,” Derek specified.

“Rude,” Lydia muttered, but Allison just narrowed her eyes.

“Derek,” Allison said slowly. “My aunt’s going to notice that missing bullet. I need to know what kind of trouble I just got myself into saving your life.”

 

~

 

They made it to the hospital’s Long Term Care center at the tail end of visiting hours, and met Derek’s comatose uncle, Peter Hale. It wasn’t a long visit; Derek barely had a minute to tell them _why_ a born werewolf was at the hospital before Peter’s nurse Jennifer kicked them out.

Lydia was pretty sure hearing about ten people burning to death, some of them children, was going to give her nightmares. Possibly for the rest of her life.

If it didn’t, the knowledge that Allison was sleeping one floor above the woman that orchestrated the fire certainly would.

 

~

 

Allison couldn’t sleep that night. She crept out her window and took off jogging, the sound of her blood roaring in her ears like flames, and the feel of Laura Hale’s dead, staring eyes driving her to run faster and faster, until she arrived back at her own window a split second ahead of the dawn.

She made herself shower, and put on make-up, and double-check that she had all her homework in her bag before going downstairs to breakfast.

Then she made herself smile when Aunt Kate handed her a cup of coffee.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There is a pretty brief description of Allison's nightmares in this chapter, which contain disturbing imagery. I think it's all covered by the violence warnings from the tags, but this is an extra heads-up about it.

Almost week after Derek had been shot, nearly midnight on Saturday, Allison followed the sound of howling out into the night again. There were no hunters this time, and the scent of the alpha was already fading, but she found Derek standing on the roof of a video store that reeked of fresh blood.

“You’re late,” Derek said, once Allison climbed up. “He already killed and left.”

“I know,” Allison said, dusting her hands off on the front of her jeans; the ladder to the roof had been grimy. “I knew once I heard the howl. That was triumph, not a summons.”

Derek snorted. “Any howl is a summons.”

“Stiles said howling is how wolves find their packmates,” Allison said. She pulled her sloppy ponytail out and re-did it, making it tighter, harsher. “Are we a pack?”

“No,” Derek said. “None of us are. The alpha turned you, you have a connection with him that I don’t, but you’re not pack, not yet.”

“Peachy,” Allison muttered. Derek turned to go, and Allison caught his shoulder. “Be careful for a couple days. I overheard Aunt Kate on the phone with some other hunters. They’re looking for you. She thinks you can help her find the alpha.”

Derek nodded, once, then jerked his shoulder away and left.

 

~

 

By the time Allison got home, it was technically Sunday morning. She climbed up to her window with ease; between the few times the alpha had dragged her from dreams into waking nightmares, and the frequent nights when she’d been unable to sleep and had run through Beacon Hills to quiet her mind, Allison had a lot of practice sneaking out of, and back into, her room.

In the windowsill, Allison paused, listening. Her family’s heartbeats were steady in sleep; her absence hadn’t been noticed, her return disturbed no one. She sighed in relief, pulled off her shoes, and slipped back into bed.

Around eight in the morning, there was a change in someone’s heart rate and breathing, and Allison snapped awake, going very still. Kate’s footsteps went from the guest bedroom to the kitchen, and after a few minutes, to the garage.

The sound of the garage door opening, and Kate leaving in her car, awoke Chris and Victoria, but after a few minutes Allison heard their body rhythms return to slumber. That was when she slipped out of bed and into daywear, and then to the kitchen. While her bagel was toasting, Allison wrote a note to her parents saying she was spending the day with friends, and had her cell phone.

Allison’s Mazda was in the driveway;  her space in the garage was saved for Aunt Kate now. Allison sat in her driver’s seat, keys still in her pocket, and texted Scott. _Can you hang out today?_

She munched on her bagel while she waited, and a few minutes later Scott sent her a text back.

_Yeah. Stop at the end of the driveway and call me. Mom just got back from her midnight to 8 shift, I don’t want your engine to wake her up._

_Okay_ , Allison sent back, and wrapped up the second half of her bagel, putting it and her phone on the front passenger’s seat before taking out her keys and starting up the Mazda.

 

~

 

“Hey,” Scott said, opening the car door, and starting to swing inside.

“Hold on!” Allison said, putting one hand on his arm. He glanced down, and saw her grab her cell phone and half a bagel off of the seat. “Sorry.”

“It’s cool,” Scott said, letting go of the door and plunking into the now empty seat. He leaned over and kissed Allison on the cheek. “So, where are we going?”

“I…didn’t actually think of that,” Allison said, tapping two fingers against the steering wheel. She looked over at him, face scrunched up. “Do you have any ideas?”

“Well, not your house,” Scott said, with a shrug. “Aaaand not my house.” He nodded back up the driveway. “And if we go to Lydia’s she’s gonna want us to study.”

Both Scott and Allison’s grade point averages were hovering in the low B range, kept out of the dreaded C zone thanks to Lydia, who had instituted group study sessions most weekday afternoons shortly after the werewolf thing had begun.

“And if we went to Stiles’ house,” Scott finished. “He’d probably ask why we didn’t go to Lydia’s.”

“Oh my god,” Allison said, flopping back against her seat’s headrest. “If he doesn’t ask her out soon, I’m gonna do it for him.”

“I tried that back in eighth grade,” Scott said. “Well, tried to try. He tackled me before I could get to her lunch table, and we got a detention.”

“You’re kidding me.”

“Nope,” Scott said, grinning. “How about this, if he’s still stalling by the Winter Formal, you ask him for a dance, and I ask Lydia, and then we switch ‘em?”

“Deal,” Allison said. “But that’s in almost two weeks. What’re you and I doing _today?_ ”

“We could go bowling,” Scott said, but Allison shook her head with a disgusted look. “What?”

“Bowling alleys usually smelled off even when I was still just human,” Allison said. “I think it’s all those rental shoes. I don’t want to find out what that smells like _now_.”

“Okay,” Scott said. He leaned over to give her another kiss, and this time she turned to catch his lips with her own. A minute or so later they pulled apart, and Scott smiled. “We could just stay here in your car.”

Allison glanced around, and then back at him, one eyebrow arched. “Kind of cramped, don’t you think?”

“Yeah,” Scott said, nodding. “So we need to think of a place that doesn’t smell like used shoes, and isn’t cramped. Maybe, um…huh, um…oh, how about the woods?”

“My aunt’s stalking Derek today,” Allison said.

“So we avoid his house,” Scott said. “That’s really easy, the nature preserve’s pretty big.”

Allison bit her lip and tapped on the steering wheel again, then nodded.

 

~

 

It was sunny, and after exploring the edges of a creek for the rest of the morning, Scott and Allison found a log covered in dry moss to lean against. They settled down with Allison’s back to Scott’s chest, his arms wrapped around her.

“I can hear mice in the brush,” Allison said quietly, while Scott nuzzled his face against the top of her head. “At least, I think it’s mice.”

“Anything else?” Scott asked, lips moving against her hair.

“Birds,” Allison said, frowning a little as she listened.

“I can’t hear any bird calls,” Scott said.

“Not calls,” Allison said. “Talons, on the bark.”

“Wow,” Scott said. “That’s so cool.”

“Mm-hm,” Allison hummed, shutting her eyes to block out the noontime sun. She could feel Scott’s heart beating steadily behind her, and her own synch to the rhythm. She made a contented noise, and Scott squeezed her a little.

“Are you falling asleep on me?” he whispered.

“Maybe,” Allison murmured.

 

~

 

Allison woke just as the sun was starting to hit the horizon, the trees around her and Scott cutting the light up into thick stripes. Her head was resting on Scott’s leg, and above her, Scott was using his right hand to shake out his left arm.

“What are you doing?” Allison asked.

“I may have waited longer than I should have to get you off my arm,” Scott said, still shaking. “Completely pins and needles right now.”

“Good thing I’m driving then,” Allison said, pushing herself up. She surreptitiously wiped a patch of drool from the corner of her mouth, ignoring the damp spot she’d left on the fabric of his jeans, and kissed Scott on the corner of his jaw. He turned to kiss her back, and then his stomach rumbled.

They looked at each other for a startled moment, and then burst into giggles.

 

~

 

Melissa McCall invited Allison to stay for dinner when she brought Scott home, and she wound up not getting home until ten at night. Chris and Victoria were reading in the den.

“Where’s Kate?” Allison asked, swooping down to kiss her mother gently on the cheek.

“She retired early,” Chris said, while Victoria patted Allison’s hand on her shoulder.

“She has a headache,” Victoria added. “So no keeping her up with girl-talk.”

“Sure,” Allison said, pulling away. She gave her dad a one-armed hug before heading for the stairs, calling a good-night behind herself. Shortly after opening the door to her room and tossing her bag onto her bed, she heard Kate walk from the guest room to the den. Allison tip-toed back down the hall, and crouched at the top of the stairs.

“Laurence and Hudson didn’t spot Derek’s car in town all day,” Kate said, sounding annoyed. “He’s not just staying off the grid, he’s dropped off the whole damn radar.”

Allison twisted her fingers around one lock of hair. She heard stiff paper scrape across a page as Victoria placed a bookmark in her novel and set it aside.

“Was he even staying out there to start with?” Victoria asked. “Or were you _completely_ wrong?”

“Oh, we found traces,” Kate said, insulted tone barely contained. “He’s been living there. He just wasn’t there today.”

“Could just have been bad timing today,” Chris said calmly.

“Oh, like how my missing bullet could just be a miscount?” Kate countered. Allison’s hand jerked, yanking out a few strands. They dangled from her fist as she tightened her fingers more into her hair.

“No, it’s not bad timing when his car’s hidden as well as he is,” Kate continued. She was pacing, her footsteps feathery on the carpet of the den. To human ears, it was probably silent. “Either Derek’s skipped town, or something sent him to ground. He’s being cautious.”

“He shouldn’t _be_ cautious right now,” Victoria said. “He doesn’t have a pack to ground him, not unless he joined the alpha.”

“And the alpha killed his sister,” Chris added. “So it’s…unlikely.”

“He might team up just to get back at us,” Kate pointed out, spinning on one foot, and pacing back across the den again. “He knows _we_ cut her in half; no one else would bother.”

Allison’s whole body flinched, and for a moment she felt cold skin and dirt against her fingers.

“You know what I think?” Kate said. Victoria sighed. “I think he’s avoiding us so he won’t accidentally lead us to the second beta.”

“ _What_ second beta?” Victoria asked, voice sharp and demanding.

“Whoever helped him get over that wolfsbane bullet I put in him,” Kate said. Allison could hear the smug smile in her voice. “Chris can tell you about it.”

Chris sighed, and probably rolled his eyes, but that wasn’t something Allison could hear. “Even if you did hit Derek that night,” Chris said. “And even if you didn’t just miscount your bullets, and _even if_ you’re right and Allison’s friend stole it, that doesn’t mean there’s a second beta. You don’t need to _be_ a wolf to _help_ one.”

“Hm,” Victoria hummed. Kate had stopped pacing in the middle of the den. “Which friend?”

“Lydia,” Kate answered quickly.

“Keep an eye on her,” Victoria said immediately. “Wolf or human, if she _is_ helping him, then she’s our only lead to Derek. And _he’s_ our only lead to the alpha.” The spine of her novel slid across the end table as she picked it up again. “We’ll discuss this more tomorrow.”

“Great,” Kate said, and left the den. Allison quietly unbent from her crouch, and crept back to her room. She still had the hair she’d pulled out clenched in her fist, and she forced her fingers to relax, letting the long strands fall into the trash bin by her desk.

 

~

 

Monday was Allison’s birthday, which she decided had to be one of the worst coincidences ever, because that meant it had a chance of lingering references for the rest of the week.

All of the peace she’d gathered in the woods with Scott on Sunday had been leeched out of her by eavesdropping on her family; she dreamt of the bite mark on her side stretching to rip her in half; of her father shooting her in the arm with a poison bullet instead of an arrow and coughing out black bile like Derek had; of her mother and Aunt Kate calling her affectionate names while cutting her in two.

Allison woke up shaking, and spent almost twenty minutes brushing her hair before she was calm enough to get dressed for the day. She debated hiding in her room until she _had_ to leave for school, or just going earlier. Either way, she wanted to spend as little time in the rest of the house as possible.

Waiting too long and arriving late to class seemed like a bad idea; she could almost hear Lydia _tsk_ -ing. So Allison opted to rush out of the house. She was in the kitchen grabbing her lunch out of the fridge when Kate appeared behind her.

“Happy birthday, kiddo,” Kate said when Allison spun around with a muffin in one hand, her lunch bag in the other, and her backpack slipping down one arm.

“Thanks,” Allison said. She set the muffin down and shrugged off her backpack so she could stow her lunch bag. While she did so, Kate pulled a small velvet box out from behind her back. She held it out with a smirk, and Allison took it tentatively. Inside was a silver pendant with a wolf figure.

“It’s been in the family a long time,” Kate said, her smile self-satisfied and teasing. “Maybe even centuries.”

“Oh, wow,” Allison said. She knew from her own jewelry that silver didn’t actually hurt her, but it still felt like the pendant was burning against her palms. She glanced around the kitchen, wanting to put it down before picking her backpack and muffin back up. “That’s…that’s _really_ old, you know what, I’m gonna keep it somewhere safe, and–”

“Oh no,” Aunt Kate said. “Just because it’s old doesn’t mean it has to be locked up. Here.” She took the necklace back from Allison’s hands, and looped the chain over Allison’s neck, letting the pendant fall to her chest with a thump. “See? It didn’t break. Now go enjoy your birthday.”

Allison forced out a smile and another “thanks”, grabbed her things for school, and fled.

 

~

 

At school, Allison discovered that Lydia had taken advantage of the fact that she knew Allison’s locker combination to fill said locker with balloons. Allison popped one, immediately regretted doing so, and looked around for a way to dispose of them.

Not many people were at school yet, so she tied them to a garbage can down the hallway when no one was looking, and hustled away. The silver pendant was still around her neck, hitting her chest with every step. When she got to her first class, she frantically undid the clasp and shoved the whole thing into her pocket.

At lunch, she dug it out and handed it to Lydia before the boys arrived,

“It’s like having a little bit of Kate tied around my throat,” Allison said, shuddering.

“That’s a horrible image,” Lydia said, and tucked the necklace away in her make-up case. She sighed. “I’m adding this to my list of symbols to research. Do you _know_ how many occult symbols got made up only fifty, a hundred years ago?”

“Too many?”

“ _Way_ too many.”

“Back on the subject of Kate” Allison said, crossing her arms on the lunch table and leaning forward. “I heard her talking to my parents. She thinks you stole that bullet the other day, and that you’re helping Derek.”

“Hm,” Lydia said.

“She thinks you might be another beta.”

“That’s gonna make life fun,” Lydia said. She sounded pleased. Stiles and Scott made their way over with their lunch trays then; Scott slid into the seat next to Allison, greeting her with a kiss on the cheek, and Stiles took the spot across from them, next to Lydia.

“Happy birthday!” Scott said, beaming.

“How does everyone _know_?” Allison whined.

“Facebook notification,” Stiles said. “You’re gonna have a deluge of messages when you get online.”

Allison dropped her head down onto her crossed arms and moaned.

 

~

 

During Allison’s last class of the day, someone finally managed to get “Actually, I just turned seventeen,” out of her, and the usual slew of “Oh my God, you are so _old_ ,” responses started. They were supposed to be sharing information between groups for their labs, so the teacher didn’t care that everyone was talking. Allison gritted her teeth and tried to ignore the assumptions (“Did you get caught with drugs?” “Did you fail all your classes?” “Were you pregnant?”) but it was _hard_ , she just wanted them to _shut up_ , and _leave her alone_ -

There was a tiny ripping sound, thankfully audible only to her, from her nails turning into claws and tearing holes in the knees of her jeans from where she’d been clenching her legs under the table.

Then, suddenly, Scott was at her side, rubbing circles on the small of her back, and Stiles was asking their most persistent classmates what their lab results had been and drawing them away from her. Her claws didn’t retract until the end of class, but nothing else changed, nothing noticeable. Scott stayed by her side until the bell rang and the sound sent Allison’s hands flying to her ears, clamping down, shutting out the awful noise.

“You okay?” Scott asked, and Allison pulled her hands down, staring at her human-once-more hands for a moment.

“I’m okay,” Allison said. She turned and gave him a kiss on his cheek before scooping up her backpack. “Thanks.”


	8. Chapter 8

It was kind of a shitty way to celebrate a birthday, Stiles thought; they just went to his house after school and fell into their normal routine. But Allison had insisted on _not_ celebrating, so here they were.

If someone had told him a month ago that Lydia Martin would regularly show up in his bedroom, Stiles would have walked into a wall, and possibly burnt a _thank you_ offering to whatever gods were keeping a voyeuristic eye on him. If they’d mentioned Scott and Allison being there too, that’d be a confusing but not unwelcome idea.

The reality of Lydia taking over his desk for her homework while a werewolf napped on his bed and Scott borrowed his History textbook because he’d left his own in his locker was not one Stiles would ever have imagined. Well, maybe that last part, since that wasn’t really new. And somehow _Scott gets a girlfriend, and said girlfriend drools on Stiles’ pillows and kicks his blankets onto the floor_ was par for their friendship so far.

It was actually really nice having Lydia hang out, even if she insisted homework was a higher priority than videogames. It wasn’t like they could’ve played _Halo_ without waking up Allison anyway. Stiles felt lucky, seeing her outside class and the lacrosse field, without active werewolf drama. It was nice to see her, well, not _relaxed_ , exactly, he didn’t think even Lydia saw that, but…

Sometimes he saw the moment in her math homework when she focused in, when the rest of the world dropped away from her, and a problem _clicked_.

Of course usually then Allison would roll off the bed and land on Scott, or the Sheriff would come home for a bit and ask how big a take-out order they needed, or a bird would hit the window. That last one only happened once. So far. Considering the state of the roof of his Jeep, Stiles was pretty sure the birds outside his house enjoyed tormenting him.

Today Scott and Lydia did their homework, and Stiles did _some_ of his, and looked up werewolf lore, and facts about werewolves. Maybe he could dig out some local crime statistics, and– _oh_ he should look into animal attacks too–

_Bing!_

“Wazza?” Allison said, lifting her head off Stiles’ pillow.

“Just a text from Scott,” Stiles said. He hadn’t even noticed Scott leaving for work. Lydia spun the swivel chair around and made a _go on_ gesture. “He says my dad stopped by with some security camera footage from that video store.”

Allison pushed herself up and swung her legs off the bed. “Me’n Derek aren’t on it, are we?” She asked, and rubbed at her eyes.

“Nah,” Stiles said. “They got some kinda figure crashing out the window? Came out on all fours, then got up on two legs. Dad wanted to ask Scott’s boss if it coulda been a bear.”

“A _bear?_ ” Lydia echoed, appalled.

“Tol’ you the alpha was big,” Allison said. Stiles glanced over at her, and she blinked back sleepily. “Can you text Scott back and tell him I’ll give him a lift home, later? Parent-teacher conferences. House’ll be empty.”

“Sure,” Stiles said, tapping at his phone’s keypad. “Go back to sleep, you look like hell.”

“Nope!” Lydia said, lunging forward to snag Allison’s elbow before she could flop back down onto the bed. “You’ve still got homework.”

Lydia’s insistence on completing all their schoolwork was why none of their grades were low enough to warrant personal attendance at the parent-teacher conferences tonight. “Bad grades lead to parental attention,” Lydia had said, the first time Allison had tried to sleep through an entire study sessions. “Which we are _trying_ to avoid.”

About an hour later, the girls left, and an hour after that, Stiles’ dad called him.

“Yo, Dad, what’s up?”

“Melissa’s insisting I get a ride home,” Dad said. “Can you swing by the hospital?”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Stiles said, snatching up his keys and rocketing out of his room. “Why are you at the hospital?” Stairs were a stupid invention, Stiles decided, picking himself up and running for the front door.

“It’s nothing, really,” Dad said. “Just…what’d she say…ah, yeah, ‘ _light tissue damage_ ’. I’m fine, kid.”

“Damage isn’t fine,” Stiles said, phone mashed between his ear and shoulder as he tried to unlock his Jeep.

“Stay off the phone while you’re driving, son,” Dad said, and hung up.

Melissa was in the lobby of the hospital when Stiles arrived, sitting next to his dad. She wasn’t in her scrubs, why wasn’t she– oh. Right. Conference night.

“Easy, easy,” she said, when Dad stood up and hugged Stiles. _Light tissue damage_ , don’t squeeze, don’t pat his back too hard…

“What happened?” Stiles asked, pulling back.

“Would you believe a mountain lion running through the school parking lot?” Dad asked.

“…yes,” Stiles said. “But…doesn’t that lead to more…bleeding?”

“Your father got hit by a car,” Melissa said. “The _mountain lion_ didn’t actually hurt anyone.”

“Your friend…Allison? Her dad shot it,” Stiles’ dad explained.  “So, good news, we get to lift that curfew. Bad news is there’s going to be a _lot_ of paperwork.”

 

**~**

 

“No texting at the dinner table.”

“Sorry, Mom.” Allison risked another glance at her phone, and the message Stiles had sent to all of them; _Cougar in the school parking lot. Side effect of Big Bad Wolf in woods? Taking fall for maulings._

“Aw, let the kid text,” Kate called out from the kitchen. “Dinner’s over anyway, time for dessert.” She walked in with a large cupcake on a tea plate, a single birthday candle lit on top of it.

“We can’t do that yet,” Allison said, looking between Kate and Victoria. “Dad’s not home, he’s always…”

“Not this year sweetheart,” Victoria said. “Those forms down at the station must be taking a while.”

“Make a wish!” Kate said, setting the cupcake down in front of Allison. “Maybe you should wish for some alone time with that boyfriend of yours, huh?”

Allison kept her gaze down towards the candle, rather than glancing at Victoria; she could _feel_ the icy expression Kate’s comment had produced. “But why is Dad at the station at all?” she asked, watching a drop of red wax run down the candle onto the stiff white frosting.

“Because I missed the most exciting parent-teacher conference _ever_ ,” Kate said, putting her hands on Allison’s shoulders and leaning around her.

“A mountain lion got into the parking lot,” Victoria said. “And your father reacted faster than the Sheriff. That’s all.”

“Are you saying he _shot_ it?” Allison asked. Kate’s grin was turned bright by the candle. “That’s _terrible_ , it was probably scared by all the people and noise, and–”

“It was dangerous, and your father saved lives,” Victoria said sharply. “Now,” she said, leaning back in her chair with a forced smile. “Are you going to make your birthday wish?”

Kate let go and stepped away as Allison inhaled.

 

~

 

“That is so inelegant,” Lydia muttered, eyeing the text from Stiles disdainfully. “A cougar in the parking lot? Really?” She tapped her thumb against the phone for a moment, before writing back. _Do we still have a curfew?_

_Nope_ , was the reply barely a minute later.

Lydia grimaced, and sent another text, addressed to all three of the others. _There’ll be more bodies soon. If people think the cougar did the attacks, and it’s dead, they won’t be as careful_.

Her phone rang as soon as she sent the message, and she answered it without looking. “Stiles, we’re going to need a lot more caution if–”

“Caution?” Jackson said sarcastically. “Have you _met_ Stilinski?”

Lydia closed her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. “Jackson.”

“ _Lyd_ ia.”

“I thought you weren’t talking to me?”

“I’m not,” Jackson said, with an edge of petulance and a lot of aggravation. “I’m talking to my _phone_. You just. You just are there. On the phone.”

“You know I don’t need to smell your breath to know you’ve been drinking, right?” Lydia said. “Please tell me Danny’s with you at least.”

“He took my keys away,” Jackson said. “And don’t change the subject.”

“ _What_ subject, Jackson?” Lydia asked, sighing.

“You, and _Stilinski_? He never even makes it off the _damn bench_ , and you were always on me about going pro, and now you’re answering the phone thinking it’s _him_ calling, and I don’t get it, Lydia.” There was a long, speculative pause. “An’ he bugs Danny. How can you take calls from someone who bugs Danny?”

“Danny should’ve taken your damn phone away too,” Lydia muttered.

“What?”

“We’re in a study group,” Lydia said. She wished this conversation were happening in person so she could glare properly, or storm off. Cell phone conversations were so unsatisfying. “That’s it. You know, you weren’t this much of an ass when you thought I was cheating on you with Allison. And believe me, you were a _major_ ass.”

“Because Allison’s cool,” Jackson said matter-of-factly. “Unlike Stilinski. Or McCall. I don’t get it, Lydia.”

“So you’ve said.”

 

~

 

Scott paced.

Melissa was home by now, ensconced in her room with a book. She hadn’t told Scott anything he hadn’t already gotten in texts. She _had_ added a stronger sense of urgency, speaking of the incident with the same tightly controlled voice she used to describe ER scenes that hit too close to home; teenagers with their own cars and their parents’ alcohol, young athletes with head injuries or broken bones.

They didn’t speculate what might’ve happened if Scott had been there, or if the car that hit the Sheriff had been going faster, or if Chris Argent had missed. They just hugged tight, and changed the subject.

Up in his room, all Scott had texted back to everyone was _be careful,_ which felt so…so… _obvious_. And useless. Lydia kept Allison close when danger was in the air, and Stiles wouldn’t listen to caution anyway.

It felt like things had changed, but he couldn’t see _how_. The alpha was still out there. People had barely followed the curfew to _start_ with. The police still didn’t know they were dealing with the supernatural. And confirming that Chris carried a gun when a bow would be too obvious was _not_ a _surprise_.

So Scott paced.

 

~

 

The next day, Lydia smirked at the sunglasses Jackson was hiding behind, and waited for him and Danny to pass by before slamming her locker shut as loudly as possible. Jackson winced. Twenty feet down the hall, Allison did too, and turned to give Lydia a questioning look.

“Sorry,” Lydia called quietly, and Allison shrugged before heading to class.

During their free reading time in English, Lydia found herself mulling over the split-second decision she’d made to keep the supernatural a secret from Jackson, which had resulted in their break up. She’d _had_ the chance to tell him, back when he’d demanded to know why she kept blowing him off to spend time with Allison and “those two losers”.

She could have told him then. But she hadn’t. And she couldn’t find it in herself to regret that. The more people who knew, the higher the danger was. They still hadn’t identified all the hunters in town; the wrong conversation in the wrong place could always get back to Allison’s family.

“Simple as that,” she murmured under her breath, so quiet not even the other students seated closest heard her. She drew her finger down the page of the book she wasn’t concentrating on, and wondered what life would be like if her party hadn’t been on a full moon, if she’d been kept in the dark too…

_Boring, that’s what._

At lunch, Lydia spent a long moment surveying the cafeteria before heading to her little pack’s usual table. Allison and Stiles were already sitting down, on opposite sides of the table from each other, and Scott was working his way through the buffet line. Lydia _could_ sit next to Allison.

She sat next to Stiles instead, ignoring his unsubtle double-take. Across the lunchroom, Danny raised his eyebrows, and then elbowed Jackson. Lydia smiled slowly.

“You okay?” Allison asked, as Scott slid in to the seat next to hear. “You seemed tense this morning.”

“I’m great,” Lydia said, making her smile as bright as possible. “So aside from unfortunate wildlife, is there anything new we should all know about?”

“Well, you know that history project we’ve got?” Allison said, opening her hand above the table. “Where we have to connect it to our family?”

“Yes?” Lydia said, twirling her salad fork languidly.

“I may have kinda sorta maybe mentioned it at dinner last night,” Allison said. She winced. “When my mom asked how school was going. Aunt Kate got really into it. She told me to look up _la bête du Gevaudan_. It killed over a hundred people centuries ago in France, and the illustration looks like a wolf.”

“How’d your folks take that?” Scott asked.

“Dad was still at the police station,” Allison said. “And I’m not sure about my mom. She didn’t tell Aunt Kate that it was inappropriate for the dinner table though, so that might have been approval.”

Lydia tapped her salad fork against her lunch tray. “Between that and the necklace, it sounds like your aunt’s trying to ease you in to the family business.”

Allison blanched, and started rubbing her arm. “So,” Allison said, voice a little too bright. “The question now, is do I get enthusiastic, and see how much info I can get, or do I act bored, and hope she stops paying attention to me?”

Lydia frowned. “Aside from Derek, your family is our best chance at a firsthand source,” Lydia said. Allison was still rubbing her arm. “But safety’s priority. It’s up to you.”

 

~

 

Stiles and Scott had lacrosse practice after school that day, so Allison and Lydia went to Lydia’s house to study, and the boys joined them later.

Allison hadn’t been called on a night-time run after her birthday dinner, so she didn’t take a nap. Lydia was happy about that; it’s a lot easier to run potential factoids and bits of mythology past your werewolf friend, to see if any of them match her experience, when said werewolf friend is actually awake.

Allison had been avoiding her own house as much as possible lately. Half the time she ate dinner at whichever house they were using as a study-base that day, going home just to sleep and reassure her parents she was still alive. Her dad always called at six in the evening or so, to find out if they should set a place for her at the table or not.

Lydia usually tried not to eavesdrop, but, well, Allison never bothered to take her phone calls out of the room. Lydia thought Chris Argent sounded permanently concerned.

Today wasn’t an exception, and while Scott and Stiles had to leave around dinnertime, Allison stayed. Lydia’s mom was getting in the habit of making enough dinner for three people whenever she spotted Allison’s car in the driveway.

Eventually though, Allison did have to go home. Lydia gave Allison a hug, while her mother simply waved a “goodnight” before vanishing into her home office. Leaning on the doorframe, Lydia watched Allison walk to her car.

Allison had gotten the driver’s side door open when she froze, turning slowly to look to the right side of Lydia’s house, at the yard.

“Lydia,” Allison said, in slow, steady, loud voice, and Lydia felt the hair on the back of her neck and along her arms rise. “Go inside. Close the door.”

Lydia did so, and immediately looked out the decorative glass panels on her front door, saw Allison _leap_ into her car and slam the door closed as a huge figure ran out from the yard and circled the car. Lydia was frozen, staring, hands flat against the wood of the door, as the giant furry _thing_ lingered for way too long outside Allison’s car.

And then it was gone. Lydia blinked, and it was gone, and Allison’s car was still there, no chunks ripped out, no windows shattered, no claw marks. Nothing. It was fine. Lydia scrambled her hands against the fabric of her skirt, trying to get her cell phone out too fast for dignity.

Allison picked up before the first ring even finished.

“Allison, are you okay?” Lydia asked. Allison didn’t answer, just breathed, short and quick and sharp. “Allison, talk to me. What just happened? Was that the alpha? Is it coming back? Are you okay, Allison _what happened?”_

“It drew a spiral on my window,” Allison said, and she started breathing normally again. “That’s it. That’s all it did. It felt so _angry_ I thought it was gonna– but then it just drew that spiral and left.”

“Is it coming back?” Lydia asked.

“Not tonight,” Allison said, and Lydia felt herself relax. Marginally. “Stay inside anyway.”

“As if I’m ever opening the door again after that,” Lydia said, and heard Allison snort. “Go home before your dad panics. I’ll make sure my mom doesn’t leave the house tonight either.”

“Yeah, yeah okay,” Allison said, and drove away.

 

~

 

“I can’t find it,” Allison said, shoving an old tome away from her, sliding it across the table. Stiles caught the book before it could fly all the way off the table to the floor. It was early Wednesday evening, and she, Lydia, and Stiles had spent most of their afternoon in the public library.

“It’s not anywhere online,” Allison continued. “It’s not in any of the books Aunt Kate recommended for the history project, it’s not anywhere. Nothing talks about spirals.”

Lydia sighed. “This means we have to ask Derek about it, doesn’t it,” she said.

“Good luck with that,” Stiles said, snorting. “We know he’s been avoiding the Hale house since Allison’s aunt started her little stake out. And it’s not like he left us a forwarding address.”

Allison let her head drop to the table and groaned. “Then where the hell is he staying?”

“Probably in the back of his car,” Lydia said, and then Stiles’ phone chimed.

“Scott’s bike wheel went flat,” Stiles said, reading the text message. “He needs a lift from work.” Stiles started to get up, grab his backpack, when Allison lifted her head from the table.

“I’ll go,” she said. “I’m useless for studying right now anyway. Meet you two back here?”

 

~

 

They were halfway back to the library when Scott realized he’d left his jacket at the animal clinic. So Allison turned her car around, and drove back.

“You want me to come in with you?” Allison asked when they hit the parking lot.

“Nah,” Scott said, getting out of the car. “I’ll just be sec, and anyway, you kind of freak out the animals.”

Scott didn’t really pay attention to the fact that the lights were still on, since Dr. Deaton often stayed at the clinic after closing hours. Scott had just found his jacket when he heard raised voices. He darted to the back room without really thinking, to find Dr. Deaton tied to his office chair, and just in time to see Derek punch him across the face, knocking him out cold.

“What the _hell?!”_ Scott shouted.

“He can keep from healing if he’s conscious,” Derek said. He pulled his arm back to deliver a second blow, and Scott stepped forward on instinct, saying “Why don’t we just–”

Oh. So that’s what it felt like to be punched in the chest so hard you flew across a room. That hurt. That kinda actually hurt a lot, and it took a moment to get his breath back. No wheezing. That was good. _Deep breaths, Scott_ , he told himself.

There was a growling sound coming from above him, and Scott looked up to see Allison wolfed out, crouching in front of him, and snarling at Derek.

“Allison,” Scott said. “Allison, it’s okay.”

“It’s not okay,” Allison snapped. “He _hit_ you.”

“He got in the way,” Derek said, and Scott got the impression that Derek shrugged, though Scott really couldn’t see Derek past Allison.

“You were gonna hit my boss,” Scott pointed out. He pushed himself into a better sitting position.

“He’s hiding something,” Derek said. He glanced around Allison towards Scott, who had one hand on the floor, about to push himself up. “You shouldn’t move. You might have a concussion.”

“Great,” Scott said. He closed his eyes and leaned back against the wall. He heard the sound of paper crinkling.

“Does whatever he’s hiding have to do with this photo?” Allison asked. She sounded less wolf-y now, which Scott figured was a good thing. Good old curiosity getting the better of bloodthirsty protectiveness.

“Yes,” Derek said, at the same instant Scott asked “What photo?”

“It’s a dead deer,” Allison said. “With a spiral drawn on it.”

“Oh, like your car,” Scott said.

“What’s the spiral mean, Derek?” Allison asked quietly. “You buried your sister under one. The alpha drew one on my car window. Now it’s on a deer?”

Scott opened his eyes, decided the animal clinic’s light was too strong, and closed them again.

When Derek spoke finally, it was with a softer tone than Scott had ever heard before, layered with fear and anger and a peculiar little twist of hope.

“It means _revenge_.”


	9. Chapter 9

“Oh, that is one hell of a text,” Stiles said, peering down at his phone. “Lydia, we gotta get to the clinic. Study time’s over.”

Lydia sighed, but started putting their array of books away.

“Derek thinks Scott’s boss is the alpha,” Stiles explained, shoving his own books into his backpack. “Scott’s insisting he can’t be, since the animals aren’t scared of him, Derek thinks that’s bullshit, and Allison’s telling Derek to meet her at the school in an hour.”

“Meet her there for what?” Lydia asked.

“For a bad idea.”

 

~

 

Lydia arrived at the animal clinic first; Stiles hadn’t explained the plan from the text, just muttered something about bolt cutters and told her meet him and the others there. Allison must have been listening for her engine, because she came out the door as soon as Lydia parked.

“Where’s Scott?” Lydia asked, getting out of her car.

“Inside,” Allison said, jerking her head back towards the building. Her hands shoved into her pockets. “Derek said he might have a concussion, so I was hoping you could stay with him while Stiles and I test a theory.”

“What theory?” Lydia snapped, just as the Jeep careened into the parking lot.

“I’ll explain it later!” Allison said, patting Lydia on the shoulder on her way to her own car; she grabbed something out of her trunk, and then ran over to the Jeep.

“Allison!” Lydia yelled, frustrated.

“It’s complicated!” Allison shouted back, before yanking the door of the Jeep closed behind her. From the driver’s seat, Stiles gave a casual salute before driving away.

“Complicated,” Lydia repeated under her breath, before turning to walk into the clinic’s back door. “I’m _really_ starting to hate that word.”

 

~

 

“What’s that?” Stiles asked, nodding sideways towards the bundle in Allison’s arms without taking his eyes off the road.

“Contingency plan,” Allison said.

“It’s your bow, isn’t it?” Stiles asked, just to make sure.

“And a full quiver,” Allison said. She adjusted the bow and quiver in her arms to prop one elbow up against the window, and rest her cheek on her fist.

“Good,” Stiles said. “Because this whole idea of calling the alpha _to_ you wasn’t really striking me as the best plan, you know? As far as our part in it, I mean. I am _all for_ getting Scott’s boss away from him if it turns out Derek’s right.”

“We’ll be fine,” Allison said. “When the alpha showed up at Lydia’s, it just drew a spiral on my car. And all we really need tonight is to confirm it’s not Dr. Deaton.”

“You do realize it could totally be Dr. Deaton, right?” Stiles asked. “In which case, I am going to retroactively freak out that we’ve been letting Scott merrily go into the Big Bad Wolf’s lair almost every afternoon for eight-fifty an hour? And speaking of retroactive freak-outs, we need to stop having study sessions at Lydia’s place. And also plant wolfsbane around her entire house.”

“…did I mention we got Derek to tell us what the spiral means?” Allison asked.

“No, no you did not,” Stiles said. “Your text mostly focused on Derek being a jerk and the plan to howl like Dr. Deaton’s life depends on it. Which it might, since apparently the Derek Hale method of deduction is focused entirely on _punching_ people until he gets answers or– _are you wolfing out in my Jeep_ , oh my God _Allison_ –”

“ _I heard the impact_ ,” Allison said. Her head was still resting on her fist, but her eyes were glowing, not just from the streetlamps they were passing, and her voice was distorted. “I heard Scott shout and then I heard him get punched across the room.” She growled under her breath. “I should have gone in the clinic with him.”

“Yeah, well, you didn’t,” Stiles said. They pulled into the school parking lot, a few spaces away from Derek’s Camaro. Stiles put his hand on Allison’s arm when she went to open her door. She looked down at his hand, and then up at his face. “Scott’s taken worse hits during lacrosse practice,” Stiles said. “He’s gonna be _fine_.”

Allison took in a deep breath, nodding. Her jaw shifted back to normal as Stiles watched, though her eyes kept their supernatural yellow glow. “Thanks.”

“Anytime.”

Derek was leaning against the side of his Camaro, and as they passed by, Stiles saw Dr. Deaton tied up in the back seat, still unconscious. Allison growled at Derek, who raised his eyebrows, and Stiles hustled her towards the door of the school.

“The faster we get this over with, the faster you can get back to Scott,” Stiles said.

Inside the office, Allison grabbed the microphone like she had a grudge against it, and growled. Well, it started as a growl, a vibration in her throat deepening as her canines elongated, and then it turned into a full-blown howl through the intercom system that made Stiles shake, along with everything else in the school.

Allison sagged back from the desk when she was done, eyes and other features finally back to normal.

“That. Was. _Awesome_ ,” Stiles told her, holding out his knuckles for a fist-bump. “I’m seriously high on adrenaline from that, and my subconscious thinks you’re gonna eat me. Once all this alpha bullshit is over we _so_ have to get Scott and Lydia out here and do this again.”

Allison laughed, and knocked her knuckles against his.

Back out in the parking lot, they discovered that the totally awesome howl had distracted Derek from keeping an eye on Dr. Deaton which, _way to miss the point_ , dude.

As soon as they noticed the open door and empty back seat of the Camaro, Allison had her bow up, an arrow already notched, all of her laughter gone. In the time it took Stiles’ to glance around the parking lot, adrenaline high from the howl transitioning to active _fight or flight_ response, the alpha had appeared, and sunk its claws into Derek’s back.

Seeing Derek lifted into the air, with blood spurting out of his mouth, was distinctly not awesome. Same went for Allison hesitating to fire since _for some reason_ she didn’t want to shoot Derek.

Not that Stiles realized that at the time. He just figured she was frozen with terror, like himself. His limbs unfroze at the same moment he realized she wasn’t gonna shoot, and he flung out one hand to shove at her shoulder. The both spun around and booked it for the door to the school.

Of course, once they got _inside,_ they realized that the only way to wedge the door shut were the bolt-cutters, which were still _outside_.

Well, at least the alpha wasn’t in sight anymore.

“Cover me,” Stiles snapped, and thank fucking god he was here with Allison, because she _did_. She stood in the doorway, bow loaded and pointed towards the parking lot, and Stiles crept towards the bolt cutters.

“Stiles,” Allison said suddenly. “Can you crouch and run at the same time?”

“Yeah,” Stiles said. He made the mistake of looking up once he got his hand on the bolt-cutters, because that meant he _saw_ the alpha next to his Jeep, which made him stumble before running back towards the school. Allison fired, and re-loaded, and fired again, and then they were both inside with the bolt-cutters jammed into the door handles and the alpha snarling outside.

“That’s not really gonna hold long, is it?” Stiles asked. The snarling stopped.

“Probably not,” Allison said, backing away from the door and glancing around the dark hallway. “We should keep moving.”

Allison wanted to check the parking lot again, maybe form a plan of escape, which Stiles was _all for_ , thank you very much, but silhouetting themselves in the window didn’t seem like a very good idea.

“Look from the corner, okay?” Stiles said, and Allison nodded. They went to opposite ends of the classroom, and peered through the lower corners of the windows.

“We could make a run for your Jeep,” Allison suggested.

“Have to find a way outside first,” Stiles said. “Windows don’t open, and I really don’t think I want to draw wolfy-boy’s attention our way with shattering glass.”

“Well maybe he’s not by the front door anymore,” Allison said, and then they both shrieked and covered their heads as something crashed through the window and thumped across the floor.

“That’s my battery,” Stiles said, stunned. That was going on the list of _Totally Not Awesome_ things from tonight; having his Jeep’s battery torn out and tossed through a school window.

“Are there any other cars out there?” Allison asked, peering out the window again rather than waiting for an answer.

“Can we discuss this in a room that the bloodthirsty werewolf _doesn’t_ know we’re in?” Stiles asked.

“He’s not out there right now,” Allison said.

“Yeah, well, we thought he wasn’t out there when I went for the bolt-cutters too,” Stiles said, and that got them moving again.

“Derek’s car was still out there,” Allison said, as they walked down the halls. Stiles wanted to hurry, but Allison was going slow, bow up, listening hard.

“Great,” Stiles said. “We get the keys off his corpse, we take his car, we’re home free.”

“Not a corpse,” Allison said. “You have to be dead to be a corpse.”

“Fine, we get the keys off his mangled, bloody body–” Stiles said, but then Allison held up her free hand, putting a finger to her lips.

“There’s another heartbeat,” she whispered, and they both froze.

“What are you kids _doing_ here?” was a relief to hear, because hey! Not the alpha! Just the janitor! Unfortunately, that just meant another vulnerable human to deal with, and–

The sight of the alpha’s red eyes appearing behind the janitor one second before giant claws ripped the man’s throat out was going on the list of _Totally Not Awesome_ events from tonight. It was going on the _top_ of the list. Stiles just hoped nothing worse happened to beat it out for that spot.

Allison fired an arrow at the alpha as it took a second swipe at the janitor’s falling body (probably a corpse! Which Stiles was still 90% certain Derek was, what with the whole blood cascading out of his mouth thing) and then a second. Both arrows hit the alpha in the shoulder, the second further in towards the torso as Allison tried to adjust her aim for the alpha’s heart.

Unfortunately, the alpha snatched the third arrow out of the air, and snarled.

Allison and Stiles ran.

 

~

 

“I don’t have a concussion,” Scott insisted. Lydia had been in a _mood_ when she arrive, and barely said _hello_. That suited Scott fine. He wasn’t in such a great mood either; howling and seeing if Dr. Deaton responded had been _his_ idea, but did he get to go? No. It was just Stiles and Allison out at the school, hoping a howl through the intercom was enough proof for Derek that Dr. Deaton wasn’t the alpha.

“You hit your head on a set of shelves,” Lydia said.  She was leaning against the examining table, looking for any similar picture of the deer on her phone. The spike of one heel was tapping against the metal table-leg, just a little bit off from her typing.

“I don’t have any symptoms though,” Scott said. He was growing nervous. It had _seemed_ like such a great idea, but…the implications of being right hadn’t really occurred to him, when the idea struck. What if the _actual_ alpha showed up? Derek and Allison could heal, if they got in a fight, but Stiles wouldn’t, and Dr. Deaton was _unconscious_.

“You already checked my eyes,” Scott pointed out, trying to sound calm and reasonable and un-concussed. “I’m not dizzy. I don’t have a headache. And I’m not sleepy.”

“Don’t care,” Lydia said, rolling her eyes. “We’re staying here until–”

_Bing!_

It was Lydia’s text-message alert. She frowned at her phone.

“What’s it say?” Scott asked.

“They need a jump start,” Lydia said. She slid her phone into her pocket, and held her hand out to Scott. “Let’s go.”

 

~

 

There was a dumpster in front of the door. Of course there was a dumpster in front of the freaking door. Because clearly the universe thought Stiles deserved to die at school and really, he knew he was a horrible person, but was he really a horrible enough person to deserve to die _at school?_

“Think we can sneak back around to the front?” Allison asked, after dragging Stiles away from the door.

“That’s probably blocked too,” Stiles said, but Allison shook her head.

“No dumpsters on that side of the school, it’d have to drag one from all the way around back. It’s probably still clear. C’mon, let’s go.”

 

~

 

Lydia was expecting to see Stiles’ Jeep on the side of the road somewhere, but they didn’t spot it until they got to the school parking lot. She pulled her car around in front of the Jeep, and that’s when they noticed the damage.

“What the hell happened to the Jeep?” Scott asked. He looks through the window at the otherwise empty parking lot. “And wasn’t Derek gonna meet them here? He’s got my boss.”

Lydia inhaled, slowly. “I don’t know,” she said, fingers turning white around the steering wheel. “It kind of looks to me like something with really big claws ripped up the hood. It also looks like Allison and Stiles aren’t here. And there’s some arrows. On the ground. Near the door of the school. Which is open.”

Scott pulled his cell phone out, but Lydia put a hand on his arm before he could dial. “They might be hiding,” she hissed. “We don’t want a ringtone to give them away.”

“Well we can’t just _sit_ here,” Scott insisted.

“We should _leave_ ,” Lydia said. “Right now. And call the police.”

“Allison always has her phone set on silent,” Scott said suddenly, looking over at Lydia. “We can call, and if something’s around, Derek or the alpha or whatever, she just won’t answer! They won’t hear it buzzing, not in her pocket, and it’s always in her pocket.”

Lydia took in a deep breath. “Okay,” she breathed out. “Call her.”

 

~

 

Scott groaned when the call went to voicemail. “She didn’t answer,” he told Lydia. She nodded, looking resigned, and turned the key in the ignition.

Then something heavy landed on the roof of the car, and roared.

Scott wouldn’t really remember getting out of the car, later. He’d remember Lydia screaming and yanking down on one side of the steering wheel, spinning the car and sending the alpha flying through the air. And he’d remember running for the front door of the school, which Stiles was holding open while Allison launched arrows past them.

But he wouldn’t actually remember getting out of the car.


	10. Chapter 10

“I am _really_ getting tired of this,” Stiles said, jamming the bolt-cutters into the front door of the school for the second time that night. “Why is this thing so _obsessed_ with keeping us in the school?”

“Less talking, more running,” Allison said, hauling him away from the door. “There’s gotta be another exit. Come _on_.”

“There should be a fire escape ladder,” Scott said.

“Yeah, on the _roof_ ,” Lydia snapped.

They had to stop running at the top of the first set of stairs, because Scott stumbled on the last step, wheezing, and started clawing at his jacket pockets. “I need– I need my–”

There was a growl from the bottom of the stairs, and a set of glowing red eyes.

“Run now, die later,” Stiles said, hauling Scott to his feet. “Allison, we need a breather–”

“Well I’m out of arrows,” she snapped, as they kept running. “So if you’ve got any suggestions, I’m all ears.”

“Barricade a classroom,” Lydia said, and shoved the other three through the nearest open door. She yanked off her jacket and wrapped it around the door handle, and jammed a chair against it. Then she made Stiles and Allison help her shove the teacher’s desk against the door, next to the chair.

The door had a little window on it, like almost every other door at the school. They took a step back when the silhouette of the alpha’s head appeared. After rattling the handle, which hardly budged thanks to the jacket and the chair, the alpha slammed against the door a few times, and then left.

“That buys us a little time,” Lydia murmured. “Okay, I don’t know how long until it tries for the windows though, so we should plan our escape route now. I suggest calling the cops.”

“No,” Stiles snapped. Lydia raised her eyebrows.

“No?”

“Nuh-uh,” Stiles said, shaking his head. “Remember what it took to take down Derek? Magic freaking wolfsbane bullet? And who the hell knows how long that’d take to work on an alpha. No way. We’re not calling the cops out here just to get ripped apart, they won’t know what they’re dealing with.”

“Call Allison’s dad,” Lydia said. “That’s the whole point of hunters, isn’t it? To deal with all the big bad wolves that the cops can’t?”

“Yeah, and that’ll be fun, explaining how we know the thing chasing us is a werewolf, _and_ that we know the Argents are hunters,” Stile said. “So much for that cover! Then we get to find out if that just how much a blood relative means to evil fucking Aunt Kate!”

“She _already_ suspects it’s me instead of Allison!” Lydia yelled. “A little extra confirmation won’t matter!”

“She _what?!_ ”

“Tell ‘em–  it’s– _bear_ ,” Scott said, shoving the words out between wheezes.

“What?” Stiles asked, and everyone turned to look at Scott. He’d just taken the second puff from his inhaler, and was silently counting to ten. Once that was done with though, he continued, words coming slowly at first, and then faster as the medication sank into his lungs.

“When your dad talked to my boss, he asked if the thing at the video store could’ve been a bear. Dr. Deaton’s told me the rabies symptoms, we can tell the dispatcher it’s a giant _freaking_ bear chasing us, foaming and swaying and running. The cops or animal control, they’ll be expecting something big, and crazy, and dangerous. They’ll bring something high-caliber, that knocks it back along with doing damage.”

Lydia was already making the call before Scott finished talking.

Turned out someone had told dispatch to expect prank calls about the high school. Stiles called his dad after that, but it went straight to voicemail.

 

~

 

Allison was sitting next to Scott, one hand on his shoulder; he was vibrating like a hummingbird, like he was going to shake apart– but his breathing was deeper now, the sound of wheezing no longer drowning out his heartbeat. The acrid smell of Albuterol was laid over his usual sunshine scent.

“You gonna be okay?” she asked, while Lydia and Stiles argued about what to do, now that dispatch had hung up on Lydia twice.

As Scott nodded and smiled reassuringly, reaching up to squeeze her hand, the hairs rose on the back of Allison’s neck.

“We need to move, _now_ ,” she said, pushing herself to her feet and taking Scott with her. She left her bow on the floor. Without any arrows left, it was dead weight.

“What?” Stiles asked, but Allison had already hauled the desk and chair away from the door, and yanked Lydia’s jacket off the handle.

“Breather is _over_ guys, let’s move!”

They had just gotten into the hallway, slamming the door behind them, when the alpha crashed through the window into the classroom.

Allison was getting really tired of running.

 

~

 

“I know this room!” Stiles yelled as they passed a closed door, several hallways and a couple floors later. “I know this room!” He grabbed a doorframe and pivoted, almost falling over as he ran back for the door.

“What the hell are you doing?!” Lydia hissed, as she and the others followed Stiles. He’d run to the far end of the room, knocking over a half a dozen chairs, and was furiously yanking on a door handle.

“This goes to the roof,” he said, before letting go. He kicked the door and walked back to the middle of the room. “And the roof’s got a fire-escape. We could get _out_ but it’s _locked_. Of course it’s _freaking_ locked.”

“Isn’t there a set of keys in the office?” Lydia suggested.

“Yeah, and on the janitor’s corpse too.”

“Corpse?” Lydia echoed quietly, eyes widening.

“I’ll go,” Allison said. She’d stayed in the doorway, keeping an eye on the hallway. “I know where the office is. And I can find the janitor by the smell. I think.”

“We’ll go with you–” Scott said, before a wheeze cut him off. Allison bit her lip as he took another hit of his inhaler, and then went back into the hallway. Stiles followed.

“Allison, we need to stick together–”

“We _need_ to find a way out,” she snapped. “And at this point, Scott can’t really run anywhere else. So I need to find those keys, and we need to get out the fire escape and back to Lydia’s car. So would you please, Stiles, please just stay with them? Please?”

Stiles closed his eyes and huffed out his breath through his nose. Then he opened his eyes and threw his hands up. “Fine. Fine. I’ll stay.” He was speaking to the air, though, because Allison had already started running down the hall. Stiles shook his head and stepped back in to the classroom, pulling the door shut behind him, and ran into Scott.

“She’s going _alone?_ ”

“Hey, we’d just slow her down,” Stiles said, slinging an arm over Scott’s shoulder and tugging him away from the door. “She can run _circles_ around that thing. I mean, if–” he caught sight of Lydia pulling out beakers and bottles from the cabinet. “What are you doing?”

“This is a chemistry room,” she said. “And while you may be optimistic about finding those keys, I’d kind of like us to have a _plan B_. Also known as a self-igniting Molotov cocktail.”

 

~

 

Scott waited tensely while Lydia and Stiles played with dangerous chemicals. Not a good idea to interrupt that, especially not with how tonight had been going. Stop Derek from hitting Dr. Deaton, get punched into the shelves. Try to prove Dr. Deaton wasn’t the alpha, put Allison and Stiles in mortal danger. Show up to help, put Lydia in danger too and get in the way.

“Guys?” Scott said, as soon as Lydia declared the Molotovs to be done. “If the alpha shows up again, before Allison gets back. You should ditch me.”

“Not happening, dude,” Stiles said.

_Hey, we’d just slow her down_. “I mean it,” Scott said. “I’ve got maybe one more run in me. If we gotta do that again, don’t wait up.”

“Self-sacrifice is for horror movies and preventing the apocalypse, dude,” Stiles said. “And I’m the comic relief, so if you bite it I’m next on the script’s hit list.”

“I for one refuse to let this be horror,” Lydia said primly. “Do you _know_ what happens to the girls with a healthy sex life in those movies? Not happening here. If the alpha shows up before Allison, we’re _lighting it on fire_. And _then_ we’re running.”

“And I will haul you over my shoulder if I have to,” Stiles added. “Which will be very awkward for everyone, and I’d probably drop you.”

 “Speaking of awful ideas,” Lydia said, turning towards Stiles. “What on Earth made you think a _jump-start_ was going to be _any_ help at all to your piece of shit Jeep?”

“Yeah dude,” Scott agreed. “It did look pretty bad.”

“The battery got _ripped out_ ,” Stiles said, looking at them incredulously. “A jump-start is kind of not even possible.”

“Then why the hell did you ask for one?” Lydia said. “Was that supposed to be code or something? Because I don’t think we ever established codes.”

“What are you talking about?” Stiles asked.

“This!” Lydia said, and held up her phone, showing Stiles the text message. He shook his head sharply, and then frowned at the message.

“I don’t know who sent this,” Stiles said slowly, looking up at Lydia. “But pretty much since Scott’s boss vanished and the alpha showed up and claw-shanked Derek in the back, we haven’t exactly had time for texting.”

 

~

 

The office was locked, so Allison went back to the hallway she remembered the janitor getting killed in. His body wasn’t there anymore, but there _was_ a trail of blood drops leading down the hall.

When the trail ran out, Allison closed her eyes, lifted her head, and inhaled deeply.

 

~

 

“If Derek got spine-shanked, where’s his car?” Scott asked, alarmed. “And what’d you mean, Dr. Deaton vanished?”

“I mean gone!” Stiles said, running his hands over his head. “And what the hell do you mean, _where’s his car_?”

“Okay, forget about Derek!” Lydia snapped. “And Dr. Deaton. They’re not important!”

“My boss and his _head injury_ are definitely important,” Scott said.

“What’s _important,_ ” Lydia said. “Is that somebody made sure the police wouldn’t come here, and that Scott and I _would_ , and then the alpha chased us into the school.”

“And mangled my Jeep,” Stiles added.

“So it’s probably mangled _my_ car by now too,” Lydia said. She closed her eyes, and then strode towards the door. “We’re locking the door and barricading it.”

“But if the door’s barricaded, Allison can’t get in,” Scott said, pushing himself away from the wall.

“Only if we’re lucky.”

 

~

 

The scent trail led to the underbelly of the gym’s bleachers, which the janitor had been wedged up into. Allison wondered briefly if the alpha was stashing the corpse to eat later, which, ew, just… _ew_. The keys were hanging from his belt, and she stretched up on her toes, grimacing. Her fingers couldn’t even brush them.

“This is what we keep Stiles around for,” Allison muttered, and _jumped_.

She overshot. Instead of grabbing the keys, Allison caught the janitor’s belt, and dislodged his body from the framework of the bleachers. Corpse, werewolf, and keys landed in a tangle on the floor. Allison whimpered, and started the shove the janitor’s body away.

The hair-raising feeling she’d had moments before the alpha burst through the classroom window was back. Allison paused, heart pounding. She heard the scrape of claws on the gym floor, and swallowed another whimper as blood dripped onto her face.

Maybe it didn’t know she was there. She could wait until it left, run back with the keys and get out before it found them again-

The bleachers started to slide shut. Allison screamed and scrambled up, one hand clenched around the keys, other flailing at the floor to propel herself forward. The edge of the bleachers smacked her heel as she burst out, and she stumbled.

The alpha’s claws snagged in the back of her jacket and threw her across the gym. A rib cracked when she hit the wall. The bleachers on that side of the gym were still out, and Allison rolled down them, busted rib trying to heal itself even as the tumbling cracked it further. She landed on the floor and pushed herself up, only to be slammed down, huge claws on her chest, giant fangs a few inches from her face, bloody breath making her screw her eyes shut.

She tried to move her arm, tried to claw at the alpha with the keys, but then the growl started.

The howls in the night that had called Allison from her room had resonated in her bones. This growl went beyond that, vibrating in the air in her lungs and the blood in her veins. She wasn’t Allison. She was a collection of echo chambers, a mass of cells that existed only to hum along with the all-consuming sound.

 

~

 

Scott was _pissed_ at Stiles, which Stiles couldn’t really blame him for, since Stiles had sided with Lydia on the lock-and-barricade-the-door-debate. Stiles wasn’t gonna regret that though, because he was pretty sure Lydia had a hell of a lot better sense of self-preservation than Scott, and Stiles really would rather get everyone out of this _alive_.

“She’s gonna die out there!” Scott yelled at them.

“The alpha could have killed her at my house last night,” Lydia insisted. “Hell, it could have killed her any of those times it called her out in the middle of the night. But it _didn’t_. She’ll be _fine_.”

“What if you’re wrong, huh?” Scott said. “What if this is the night it finally gets fed up waiting for her to join its pack, and just freaking kills her, like Derek said?”

“Because it brought us here,” Lydia said. “Derek said packs hunt together to bond. And we know how the alpha hunts. We’ve seen the results, okay? The bus driver, the video store clerk, the janitor. Now us. It chased us in here, Scott. You think it couldn’t have killed us in the parking lot? You think those arrows of Allison’s really slowed it down at all?”

“Guys?” Stiles said.

“Yes, the arrows worked!” Scott shouted. “Why would it let us live? Huh?”

“Guys?”

“Because it wants _Allison_ to kill us!” Lydia said.

“Guys!”

Scott and Lydia stopped shouting to look at Stiles, who had his hand wrapped around one of the corked chemical beakers. He jerked his head towards the door, and held a finger to his lips.

Something outside the door was growling. Then the door handle shook, rattling against the chair Lydia had jammed under it, and Stiles lifted the beaker off of the desk.

“Oh, you are _not_ lighting Allison on fire,” Scott said, moving towards him.

“Maybe it’s not Allison,” Stiles said, but he put the beaker down.

Then from outside the school, came the sound of sirens.

 

~

 

Allison would like to say that she came back to herself shortly after the god-awful noise started, scrabbling against the floor of the hallway, heels of her palms crushing her ears to her skull.

But to come back to yourself, you have to be gone first, and Allison hadn’t been gone, not really. What she had been was _more_ than herself.

So she came back to being _just_ herself on the floor, covering her ears, and the first thing she heard was Stiles on the phone, on the other side of the classroom door.

“We’re up on the third floor, Dad. It’s me and Scott and Lydia, and Allison went to look for another way out. Yeah Dad, I told her not to leave the group, she didn’t listen. No, we haven’t seen it in about fifteen, twenty minutes. Yes, we’ll stay here. Do I _know_ it was a bear? It’s huge and furry and roared, I just kind of assumed, I didn’t exactly stop to take a _picture_.”

The door opened then, and Scott practically fell out of the room and landed on both hands on the floor next to Allison.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “Are you okay? Allison, Allison, say something, please, please-”

“I’m okay,” Allison said. She didn’t bother pushing herself off the floor, figuring it was better to stay in a position that it was harder to lunge– _and bite and tear and shred and kill_ –from. She reached out with one hand, covering Scott’s.

“Lydia thought you were going to kill us,” Scott said, sounding angry. Behind him, Lydia was peering around the doorway, holding up a desk chair with both hands defensively. Behind her, Stiles was still on the phone with his dad.

“I was.”


	11. Chapter 11

The police and animal control didn’t find a bear, which made sense since there  _wasn’t_  one, but they couldn’t find the janitor’s body  _either_ , which was creeping Stiles out. Allison had told the police “I saw his body under the bleachers in the gym, when I was trying to find an emergency exit, I  _swear_  I saw it there,” and why the hell would the alpha take the janitor’s body with him when he left?

The police didn’t find any of Allison’s arrows either, or her bow. At least Stiles assumed they hadn’t, because he was pretty freaking sure they’d  _ask_  about it if they found them.

It was like the alpha was cleaning up all the evidence that anything other than a rampaging bear  _had_  been there, which kind of made sense from a “the world must not know about werewolves” perspective, but Stiles hadn’t really gotten the impression that the alpha was operating on a level beyond “chase, bite, kill”.

At least, until his Jeep’s battery had come flying through the window.

Stiles huffed in frustration and scuffed at the pavement of the parking lot, and glanced towards the ambulance where Dr. Deaton was being treated. Scott and Allison were over talking to him, their hands clasped together. Those two hadn’t let go since Scott had shoved Stiles away from the door and stumbled into the hallway to find Allison collapsed on the floor.

Scott had already told the police that the four of them had followed the Camaro to the school after they’d seen Derek Hale carrying Dr. Deaton out of the animal clinic, unconscious. The other three teenagers had nodded along, keeping their mouths shut. The Sheriff had chewed Stiles out for not calling him  _immediately_ , and then pulled him into a fierce hug.

“Your dad says Scott’s boss is why they came,” Lydia said, quietly stepping up next to Stiles. She’d asked the police if she could just drive home, because it turned out the alpha  _hadn’t_  touched her car after all, but they’d said all the kids’ parents had been contacted and were on their way.

“Got away from Derek and called for help, huh?” Stiles said, shoving his hands into his pockets and fidgeting with his keys.

Lydia shrugged. “If he hadn’t called them, and said he was near the high school, they’d likely still think my call was a prank.” She had her arms crossed in front of her, hands tucked into her open jacket. Her mascara was smudgy; she’d been crying while the police questioned them. Away from the adults, though, her eyes were dry, and her voice was back to the steely tone she’d used to direct Stiles in making their self-igniting Molotov cocktails.

“…still think the timing’s suspicious,” Stiles said, scowling towards the ambulance. “He vanishes, the alpha shows up, and shanks Derek? And what took him so long to call anyway?”

Lydia shrugged. Stiles looked past her, at the lights of the emergency vehicles sprawled around the parking lot, and then down at his shoes. He tapped the toe of his sneaker against the cement.

“What’d you mean, earlier,” Stiles asked. “About the Argents already suspecting you?”

“Because of that bullet we stole,” Lydia said. She pulled one hand out of her jacket to toss some of her hair out of her face. “They must not be watching me  _too_ closely though, or they would have done something that night the alpha harassed Allison at my house.”

“Yeah, well, this might put them back on edge,” Stiles said. Lydia’s tossing motion reminded him of Allison twisting at her own hair, back when she’d told them about getting shot by her father. He thought of Lydia with an arrow in her arm, and his stomach knotted. “If they…”

“If they what?” Lydia asked, turning to look at him.

Stiles licked his lips, and pulled his hands out of his pockets to run them over his head. “Tell them I dared you to,” Stiles said. “If they confront you, just, just act like you don’t know about werewolves, like tonight’s the first time you’ve ever even  _seen_ Derek, tell them I dared you to steal a bullet because we both knew they were arms dealers.”

Lydia blinked slowly, and a smile tugged at the corner of her lips. It never fully formed, though, as she saw her mom’s car pull into the school parking lot, and muttered something under her breath. She scrunched up her face and made several sniffing sounds, and Stiles saw tears once more welling in her eyes.

“How do I look?” she asked him, voice quavering.

“Distraught,” Stiles said.

“Perfect,” Lydia said, and then turned and ran towards her mother. Scott and Allison waved goodbye to Dr. Deaton a moment before their own parents arrived. Chris Argent hugged Allison like both their lives depended on it, while Victoria Argent began berating the nearest police officer for not responding to Lydia’s phone call fast enough.

Stiles waved to his dad, and then jogged over to where Melissa McCall was quietly hugging Scott.

“Hey,” Stiles said. “Can I get a lift?”

 

~

 

“Allison?” Chris Argent asked, eyes flicking briefly from the road to the rearview mirror. Allison was slumped against the window of her seat, replaying the events of the night in her head. Kate was in the other back passenger seat.

“Allison, talk to us,” Victoria said, when Allison didn’t respond to her father’s query. Allison just pressed herself more firmly against the window, hoping that the vibrations of the car against her skull would drown out the anxious heartbeats of her family.

“Sweetie,” Kate said, putting a hand on Allison’s knee. Allison closed her eyes. “Why didn’t you call the police sooner? Or call us?”

“Sorry,” Allison said, the word quiet and heavy. “I didn’t think. I’m sorry.”

The rest of the drive was silent, and when they got home, Allison turned to her dad and asked, voice barely above a whisper, “Can I just sleep? Please?”

Chris nodded and hugged her, kissing the top of her head before releasing her to slowly flee upstairs. She let her body move like she was filled with lead, feigning a touch more exhaustion than she felt. After changing into her pyjamas, she heard her mother’s voice saying “This is more than just a voracious alpha. We  _are_  calling in reinforcements.”

Allison cracked her bedroom door open and crouched just inside with her cell phone, listening to her family’s conversation, and texted pieces of it to Stiles, Scott, and Lydia.

Victoria assumed Derek Hale was working with the alpha, due to his kidnapping of Dr. Deaton, which Allison felt was reassuring; why would Victoria think so, unless she had some reason to assume Dr. Deaton  _wasn’t_  the alpha?

Chris disagreed. “Why the switch from fatal attacks to a kidnapping, then?” he asked. “No, whatever Hale was doing with Deaton, he was following his own agenda, not the alpha’s.”

“You know,” Kate said. “We could settle this debate if we could just catch Derek.”

Chris ended the conversation then, and Allison heard him coming up the stairs. She scrambled up, pushing the door closed, and burrowed into her bed, clutching her phone tightly under the blankets. Allison made herself breath deep, slow, and listened as her dad pushed the door open.

After a long moment, Chris quietly closed Allison’s door again, and walked back downstairs.

 

~

 

Beacon Hills High was to stay closed while the police and animal control investigated the building; a mass e-mail and telephone announcement went out from the school’s administrative office, to let the student body and their parents know.

The morning after their ordeal, Thursday, Lydia tried calling Allison to discuss what had happened and what they should do next, but the call went right to voicemail. She texted Scott and Stiles after that, suggesting they strategize.

Stiles texted back within minutes;  _Have research/ideas, when should we come over?_  And while Lydia was contemplating how much time she needed to get her accumulated research into a sharable format, Scott replied with  _doing chores with mom._

Lydia rolled her eyes, then sighed. She  _had_  been leaning pretty heavily on all of the others to not do anything that would get their parents’ attention, but she assumed that shield had been blown last night. Seeing your boss kidnapped, and then getting supposedly chased by a rabid bear, ought to get one out of chores for  _at least_  a day.

On the other hand, maybe Scott wanted an excuse to spend time with his mother. Lydia’s was downstairs, preparing documents for an upcoming business trip. Her father had stopped by last night, because while  _Protection of Minors_  kept the public from learning what happened to you, it didn’t stop the police from notifying  _both_  of your parents.

That had resulted in her parents critiquing her for calling 911 while at  _school_ , instead of back at the animal clinic when they’d allegedly witnessed the kidnapping. She’d slunk away when they started arguing with each other over who had failed to teach her the proper response to emergencies.

That train of thought was unproductive, and Lydia re-focused on planning her day. She decided two in the afternoon would give her enough time to get her own research prepped, and texted  _My house, 2 o’clock_  to Stiles, as well as Allison and Scott on the chance that they could make it.

Lydia pulled all of her research out and spread it across her bed, hiding every trace of the covers. It felt sparse. Maybe she could– no, she’d already printed out all of her online research last night, when she’d backed everything up, e-mailed it to herself, and copied it to a few USB sticks. One to go on her keys, one to stash in her locker at school, one in her book-bag…

_It doesn’t matter how many copies you have if none of it’s relevant_ , she told herself, and sighed. Maybe she’d find a clue if she read it all again. Ugh. Should she start chronologically, or by reliability of source?

At one in the afternoon, her perusal of her photocopies of old Beacon Hills newspapers was interrupted by her cell phone ringing. She retrieved it from her bedside table and flipped it open. The first thing she heard from it was running water, followed by Allison’s voice.

“Lydia?”

“Yes?”

“Okay, I have to make this quick,” Allison said. “I’m hiding in the bathroom with the sink going, my family’s been hovering  _all day_. Like my dad keeps offering to teach me how to bake my favorite desserts, and glaring at Aunt Kate when she asks if I want to learn how to hunt bears, and my mom is just  _watching_  all of us. And she saw a text Scott sent me that he signed with  _kisses_  and I swear I think she’s gonna start checking my texts now, so like, don’t text me.”

“Did she see the one I sent today?” Lydia asked.

“Yeah,” Allison said. “I told her you’ve been upset over your break-up and you wanted a shoulder to cry on.”

Lydia made a rude noise.

“I know, I know,” Allison said. “I had to say  _something_ , and I didn’t think of the study group excuse until I’d already told her that. Sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Lydia said. “We’ll talk once school’s open again.”

“Thanks,” Allison said, and hung up.

Lydia sighed, flipped her phone shut, and went back to her reading.

 

~

 

 “You do realize your school is  _closed_ , right?” Stiles’ dad asked, as Stiles opened the door to get out of the police cruiser. They were parked where the curb of the road met Lydia Martin’s driveway.

“And all the homework is  _still_  gonna be due when we get back,” Stiles said, spinning one hand through the air. The other was holding the door open. “Hence the study session.”

“You also realize I can’t give you a ride home,” the Sheriff added, as Stiles attempted to get out of the cruiser, and was pulled back by his still-buckled seatbelt.

“Allison’s part of the study group,” Stiles said, unlatching the buckle and finally succeeding at extricating himself. “Her car’s fine. Unlike mine…you  _are_  gonna call as soon as Evidence is done with my Jeep, right?”

The Sheriff raised his right hand from the steering wheel. “I promise.”

“I’ll hold you to that,” Stiles said with a nod. Then he awkwardly dove across the car to hug his dad, who hugged back just as tight and patted his shoulder. “…be careful, okay Dad?” Stiles said, when he let go to get out of the car.

“Always am, kid.”

Stiles trudged up Lydia’s driveway as his dad drove away, shifting his backpack over his shoulders. He really did have homework inside, on the off-chance that this would morph into a regular study session, as well as his werewolf research.

Lydia opened the door within a minute of Stiles ringing the bell. Her make-up was  _perfect_ , and she’d gotten her hair out of her face by making a tiny braid from the peak of her brow, pulled back tight while the rest of her hair hung loose.

“You do realize school is  _closed_ , right?” Stiles said, his dad’s words falling out as he took in her outfit. Tight dark blue skirt, flowy white blouse, sheer tights, and  _high fucking heels_  the same blue as the skirt. The only part that wasn’t runway ready were her sleeves, unbuttoned and rolled up past her elbows.

“That’s no excuse for sloppiness,” Lydia said sharply, giving him derisive up-down glance. He tugged nervously at the sleeves of his flannel overshirt. He’d gotten used to more casualness with Lydia outside school. She and Allison always peeled off their shoes at their study sessions, and one Sunday Lydia had arrived with no make-up…well, aside from some lip-gloss and mascara.

“Can me and my sloppiness come in anyway?” Stiles asked.

“Only if you have relevant information to  _share_ ,” Lydia said, stepping aside, and Stiles winced. Lydia turned and headed straight for the stairs, leaving Stiles to close the front door and toe off his sneakers. She’d given him the  _filthiest_  look the first time he’d been over and left them on.

“Allison can’t make it,” Lydia added as they went upstairs. “And Scott said he was busy. So unless you’ve found something I haven’t, this really is a waste of time.”

“I’ve got an insurance report,” Stiles said, as they reached Lydia’s room and he dropped his backpack on the floor. Her bed was covered in paper. “From the Hale fire?”

“Good,” Lydia said, sitting in the chair of her vanity, back to the mirror, legs tight together and hands clasped on one knee. “Go on.”

“Back when Derek told us that Kate was responsible,” Stiles said, kneeling by his backpack and rifling through it. “I thought I’d see if there were any other Argents or hunters involved.” Stiles found the copy of the insurance report he’d made, and handed it to Lydia, pointing to the ruling: ELECTRICAL MALFUNCTION; POSSIBLE ARSON.

“This is…” Lydia scanned the page, and put her finger down by the file date, then rose from her chair to hover over her bed. The tightness in her shoulders relaxed marginally, and her voice was starting to lean towards  _excited_  instead of  _angrily scornful_. Stiles swiveled on his knees and watched her search her papers. “This matches. The finalization date of the report; the next day the newspapers pretty much drop the story.”

She turned with a smile, and Stiles’ heart leapt.

“Guess an electrical accident just isn’t as interesting as mass murder,” Stiles said, doing his best to sound casual. Wait. Should he be casual about their investigation? Shit. Lydia was rifling through papers again though, with the same intensity she gave to math problems. Stiles leaned forward, putting his hands on the edges of the bed. “If the report said it still could’ve been arson, though, why’d it get dropped?”

Lydia tapped a piece of paper from the middle of the bed. “The police didn’t have  _any_  leads,” she said, still smiling. “Or at least, none they told reporters about. And the newspapers couldn’t ferret out anything interesting that wasn’t total hearsay.”

“What do you mean, hearsay?” Stiles asked.

“I mean my mom remembers dozens of rumors circulating back then, some of them about Kate Argent,” Lydia said. “But none of them made it to the papers. Not even to the  _Letters to the Editor_  section, except this one really vague one about not trusting people that won’t settle down. I think they  _were_  talking about Kate; Allison found out that she only lived here for a few months, and left really soon after the fire.”

Stiles huffed out his breath and rubbed one hand over his head. “So hunters like her move in, find werewolves, and leave town if they kill anybody. Great. But what does it have to do with our situation?”

Lydia sighed, and backed away from the bed to thump down onto her vanity’s chair again. “Nothing,” she said, and her voice lost its vibrancy. “Absolutely nothing. I keep thinking it has to be connected, Kate coming back, and Derek, and this alpha. But Derek came for his sister, and as far as we can tell her death was just a power thing. And Kate didn’t even show up until after the bus driver got killed.”

“What about last night?” Stiles asked, having turned away from Lydia’s research to look at her while she talked. “And I don’t mean the school, I mean earlier. What about that photo Allison mentioned got Derek to go after Deaton?”

“They didn’t give you the details?” Lydia asked, and Stiles shook his head. Wow, okay, why did  _that_  make her smile? “Okay, Scott told me, that Allison told him– and no, he didn’t see it, Derek took it with him –that it was a photo of a dead deer, with a spiral drawn on it.”

“Like Allison’s window?” Stiles asked. Lydia nodded, and Stiles ran his tongue over his lips before speaking. “She said Derek told them what that meant. But I. Uh. Forgot to ask.” He reached into his pocket for his phone. “Let me just text her-”

“No!” Lydia said, putting a hand out, leaning forward sharply.

Stiles froze. “No?”

“Her parents have her on protective lockdown,” Lydia said, and Stiles could see her posture relax again as he pulled his hand back out from his pocket and held it up, empty. “Her mom’s reading her texts.”

“Well, crap,” Stiles said. He rubbed  _both_  hands over his head this time. “You know, this would be a lot simpler if we all remembered to share info  _as we learned it_. Team Open Communication or something.”

“And Team Don’t Wander Off On Your Own,” Lydia said with a roll of her eyes, and the anger creeping back in to her voice. “If you two had actually told me what was going on last night, maybe I would have been  _suspicious_ of that request for a jump-start. And if Allison had stayed with the group, maybe it would have been harder for the alpha to pull that whole  _make her want to kill us_ thing.”

“Sorry,” Stiles said sheepishly.

“Well you should be,” Lydia snapped. “I am so  _sick_  of surprises,” she added in a murmur.

There was a long silence, and then Stiles reached for backpack again. “I, ah, I’ve been organizing all those wild animal incident reports.”

“From how far back?” Lydia asked, immediately leaning forward and reaching for the sheaf of papers before Stiles even made an offering motion.

“A whole year,” Stiles said, handing over his research. “They don’t really pick up until a few months ago, before Laura Hale even came back to Beacon Hills, and there’s these spikes? I don’t know what they mean yet. But it  _really_  gets going after Laura dies, so I figure our alpha buddy’s involved.”

“Hm,” Lydia said. She and Stiles spent the next few hours going over the reports. The spikes in incidents Stiles had noticed turned out to coincide with full moons, as well as the nights Allison had told them she’d been awoken by howls.

“Some driver hit a deer the night Allison got bit,” Stiles said, sliding the relevant page across the bed towards Lydia. She was sitting against the headboard now, and Stiles was sprawled across the foot. “Report says it was the last one in a herd that ran across the road.”

“So was it hunting deer, and Allison happened to be there?” Lydia wondered aloud. “Or the other way around?” She studied the report for a moment, and then set it aside, picking up one that had pictures. “Did that autopsy report you stole give a time of death, as well as cause?”

“Not stolen, temporarily misappropriated,” Stiles said automatically, and Lydia rolled her eyes. “You mean the one for Laura Hale, right? Yeah, it was two days before they found her legs. And they found  _those_ , by the way, only a half a day after the bisection.”

“The hunters  _wanted_  her to be found,” Lydia said quietly. She handed Stiles the report with the pictures. “This one’s from the night she died, then. You know that gas station near the edge of town? Their security camera caught a pack of coyotes coming out of the woods, and a couple possums, and two different herds of deer. Busy night.”

“Maybe the alpha power-transfer freaked ‘em out,” Stiles said, looking at the low-quality photos.

After another half hour of perusal turned up nothing new, they called it quits for the day. Stiles was halfway down the driveway before he remembered that he hadn’t arrive in his Jeep, and walked back up to the house. Lydia answered the door with her eyebrows scrunched up, confused.

“Um,” Stiles said. “Can I get a lift home?”


	12. Chapter 12

Lydia spent a long time that night curled up at the head of her bed, staring at her reflection in the mirror on her vanity set. If she closed her curtains, she wouldn’t have been able to see herself, but right now the moonlight was still streaming in.

_It’s just reflected sunlight_ , she told herself for the umpteenth time. But that wasn’t going to change the fact that Monday night the moon would be full, and it would _do_ something to Allison, whether school was open again or not. And they hadn’t been planning for that at _all_. They’d barely been planning _anything._

Finally, Lydia texted _We should have a sleepover at my place on Monday_ to Allison. There. No mention of a _reason_ , for anyone snooping, and it if they pulled it off, it got Allison away from her family for the night.

If they _didn’t_ pull it off, well, Lydia wasn’t going to worry about that right now. She _wasn’t_.

She called Scott.

“Lydia? Are you okay?”

“I’m fine,” Lydia said. “Listen, we need to make a plan for the full moon. I think we can pull off another sleepover at my place, like when we broke into the bus, but we need a way to keep Allison out of the woods, and preferably just– just– _inside_ , okay. And you’re the best at keeping her grounded.”

“Take a deep breath.”

“What? I don’t need to take a–”

“Lydia.”

She screwed her eyes shut and took in a deep, slow lungful of air. Then she huffed it out into the phone. “There. Happy?”

“Yep,” Scott said. He sounded unfairly calm. “Okay, first of all, it’s two in the morning. Nobody plans well at two in the morning. Second, the main problem last month was that she was in a crowd, and Derek did that whole _luring her away_ thing. Not a problem this time, since he’s…since he’s…”

“Indisposed,” Lydia supplied, and heard Scott gulp. “You may have noticed that _since_ then, she’s tried to kill us.”

“She wouldn’t have,” Scott muttered, but then sighed. “I’ll talk to Stiles once the _sun’s_ up, okay? And you can call Allison since her parents don’t hate you. And then we’ll all get on Skype after dinner or something. Sounds good?”

“Yes,” Lydia said. She took another deep breath. “Thanks, Scott.”

“No problem. Good night, Lydia.”

“Good night.”

 

~

 

The first thing Allison did when she saw Lydia before class, once the school re-opened on Monday, was hug her, and bury her face in her hair. As she inhaled Lydia’s perfume, she felt herself relaxing.

“Rough couple of days?” Lydia asked, when Allison pulled back.

“My dad almost didn’t let me out of the car this morning,” Allison told her, as they started walking towards class. “I thought I was going to claw the door handle apart, but Aunt Kate joked about him being overprotective, and undid the lock for me.”

“He’s still letting you come over tonight, right?” Lydia asked.

“Oh yeah,” Allison said. “I said that after all the terror of being chased through the school by a rabid bear, I needed some nice normal teenage girl bonding time, or I’d have a breakdown and fail all my classes. Aunt Kate backed me up. She keeps telling Dad I’m tougher than I look.”

“That’s promising,” Lydia said.

“It’s more than promising,” Allison said. “Pretty much every time I eavesdropped on them the past couple of days, she was trying to talk him into letting her teach me about werewolves and hunting and all that. Thankfully Dad’s insisting I’m too young. I really don’t want to spend any one-on-one quality time with the woman who burned an entire family alive.”

“Sorry,” Lydia said. “I just think the more information we can get your aunt to drop, the better prepared we’ll be for whatever weird werewolf thing happens next.” She squeezed Allison’s shoulder before they stepped into their first class. “Just insist on keeping me around, I’ll protect you from the Big Bad Hunter.”

“Unless she shoots _you_ ,” Allison muttered.

 

~

 

Class that Monday started off with a test in Economics. That had been useful over the weekend, since Allison had been able to beg time off from her family to study for it. That hadn’t stopped them from popping into her doorway every hour or so to check on her, but at least it let her stay in her room.

The hallways had been noisier than usual this morning, full of people gossiping about the “break-in”, and the formal coming up on Saturday, and quite a few things that Allison really wished she wasn’t hearing. The classroom wasn’t any quieter, though at least when Mr. Harris walked in and thumped the exams down on the desk, the conversations dropped down to harsh whispers.

“Where the hell is Finstock?” Stiles hissed to Scott, from the seat behind Allison.

“He’s sick, remember? That’s why we didn’t have morning practice.”

As the test papers passed from student to student, everyone’s heartbeats went up a little. Allison chewed on her lip, wondering if she broke the skin she could wash out the taste of everyone’s anxiety. She _did_ bite through when Mr. Harris told the class to begin, and everyone flipped open their tests at one. Paper should not be that loud.

Allison sucked her lower lip into her mouth, swallowing the blood and hiding the healing. She tapped her pencil on the desk and read the first question.

  1. An increase in imports of consumer goods is likely to result in you killing:



          A. Your classmates?

          B. Your friends?

          C. Your boyfriend?

          D. None of the above?

Allison stared at the page in shock, and took a quick glance around the room; no one else looked horrified. Or _smelled_ horrified, for that matter. She rubbed her eyes and looked back down. Question number one remained the same. Allison tried to circle answer D, but the word _none_ changed to _all_ , and she quickly pulled her pencil back.

There was a cascade of soft scraping sounds, as waves of classmates finished answering the first page and moved on to the next. Allison tried to ignore it, to ignore the pencil leads snapping and fingers drumming and shoes scuffing and sleeves dragging and– the clock.

Maybe she could just listen to the clock, to one steady sound…she heard Scott sigh next to her, before erasing one of his answers.

  1. When the moon is full tonight, you will kill:



          A. All of your friends?

          B. Some of your friends?

          C. Most of your friends?

          D. None of the above?

She wasn’t focusing on the _clock_ , she was focusing on _Scott_ , on the pulse of life beating in him. She could still taste her blood in her mouth, and she wanted _more_.

Allison jammed her fingers in her ears, and clenched her teeth, keeping her lips firmly shut.

By the time the bell rang, she had yet to answer anything.

 

~

 

“So why us?” Stiles asked about halfway through lunch. It seemed only fair to let everyone get a chance to eat in peace before launching into the whole _Allison-tried-to-kill-us_ conversation. “I mean, Lydia and me already figure that it’s got something to do with fighting _against_ the alpha that first night out, with the bus driver. But why not make you kill the janitor? Or some other poor unfortunate civilian out for a night on the town?”

“Because the janitor’s not my pack,” Allison said tiredly. She wasn’t looking at any of them, though she was leaning against Scott’s side, while he kept one arm wrapped around her shoulders.

“And we are?” Stiles asked. “We’re your pack.” He nodded to himself, tapped his fingers on the lunch table. “All right. I can see that, regular old hunting wouldn’t cement the bond properly anymore, since you’ve kind of bonded with us. Not through hunting though, or anything like that. Through, like the Power of Love or something equally cheesy and Eighties flavored.” He gave a pointed look to Scott’s arm holding Allison close.

“Why hasn’t the alpha tried to make you kill your family though?” Lydia asked.  “If you don’t have to hunt together to be a pack, wouldn’t family be even more of a bond than dating or friendship?”

“They’re not my pack,” Allison said, shaking her head. “It’s just you three. Getting shot by your dad kind of breaks the family trust bonds a little. Even though he still doesn’t know it’s _me_ that he shot. And I worshipped Aunt Kate as a kid, but now she just terrifies me.”

“Understandable,” Lydia said. She glanced across the lunchroom towards the table where half the lacrosse team was sitting.

“Are you waiting for Danny to take off his shirt or something?” Stiles asked, and Lydia whipped her head back to glare at him. “Because I mean, he only did that once, and that was because his boyfriend practically _begged_ , and it wasn’t even at school.”

“Are _you_ waiting for Danny to take off his shirt?” Lydia echoed back.

Stiles rubbed his hand against the back of his head briskly, looking down at his lunch. “You just…keep looking over there…”

“She’s waiting for Jackson to leave,” Allison said, and Lydia turned the glare on her. “What? You are.”

“Why?” Stiles asked.

“I’ve been trying to talk to Danny all morning,” Lydia explained, huffing. “He’s a good hacker, I thought he could trace our Mystery Text. But he’s _always_ with Jackson, who has been a totally insufferable prick since we broke up.”

“Hasn’t he _always_ been an insufferable prick?” Stiles asked, and Lydia rolled her eyes.

 

~

 

As the day progressed, Allison talked less and less, and occasionally growled at classmates that crowded her in the hallways. The only person she let near was Scott, who she hugged and sighed against. He gave her a kiss before making his way to the locker room to get ready for lacrosse practice.

“Did she do this last full moon too?” Lydia asked Stiles at his locker, while he was grabbing everything he’d need for lacrosse.

“A little,” Stiles said. “Maybe each full moon affects her more…except Derek has _more_ control. We gotta ask him about differences between born-wolves and made-wolves sometime. If he ever turns up alive, I mean.”

“We really should write down a list of questions we need answers to,” Lydia said, twisting one thick strand of her strawberry hair around her finger.

“Yeah, because writing anything about this mess down isn’t a security breach at all,” Stiles said. “At least we can pretend the crime reports are for school.”

Lydia gave him a scornful look. “As if the stacks of folklore and supernatural romance books don’t look odd. I’ve already told my mom I’m researching for my own novel.”

“Oh,” Stiles said. “That’s…a really good cover.” He closed his locker and looked at Lydia. “Stay somewhere public until we all meet up, okay? And don’t let her parents see her while she’s all…growly.”

“Public but _quiet_ ,” Lydia said. “I remember how she got at my party. We’ll go study at the library, you two can meet us there.”

 

~

 

“Oh, that’s lovely,” Lydia said, glancing at a message on her cell phone. Allison wasn’t sure if she was being sarcastic or serious, so she glanced up from her homework and tilted her head.

“A giant _swath_ of the lacrosse team has contracted pinkeye,” Lydia told her. “So Stiles and Scott have both made first line for the next game.”

Allison grinned, pulled her own phone out of her pocket, and sent Scott a _Congratulations!_ text; that seemed innocuous enough to be safe, even if her mother confiscated her phone later. She was deleting most texts as soon as she read or sent them, but worried she’d slip up and forget.

“Hopefully having half the team made of guys who’ve never left the bench before won’t drag us down too badly,” Lydia said, frowning at her phone. She looked up and saw that Allison was giving her a quizzical look. “What? Is it really that weird that I might actually care about our team’s chances? Some of us _do_ have school spirit, you know.”

Allison just grinned wider, and went back to studying.

 

~

 

“Are you guys ready for the Greatest Sleepover Ever?” Stiles asked, appearing suddenly at the girls’ table in the library. He glanced down to Allison, who had her head on the table and was clutching her jacket to her skull. Stiles turned to Lydia. “Okay, what’s up with that?”

“There were some rather shrill kids in the children’s section a while ago,” Lydia said, starting to stack up her textbooks and binders. Allison glanced up, then put her head back down with a whimper when Lydia accidentally dropped one of the books, and clutched the jacket closer over her head. “Allison jammed scraps of tissue in her ears, and has refused to come out from under her jacket since then.”

“Well, they’re gone now,” Stiles said, looking around.

Allison made a sound that was a cross between a growl and a moan, and shook her head in a _no_ motion against the table.

“I think they’ve just gone outside, actually,” Lydia said.

Stiles strained his ears against the hush of the library, and thought he could make out a faint echo of high pitched laughter. But maybe he was imaging it.

“Scott’s waiting in the Jeep,” Stiles said. It had been released before the school had re-opened, giving him time to get it repaired. Allison perked up at his words, and snagged her backpack from the floor.

 

~

 

“Oh no,” Allison said, as they turned the corner towards Lydia’s house. “Oh no, no no no, oh my god Lydia stop the car, we have to call the boys–”

“Seriously?” Lydia said, but she pulled her car over and fished out her phone.

“That’s Aunt Kate’s SUV at the other end of the street,” Allison whispered, and tried to slouch down out of sight in her seat. “We are so screwed.”

“Hey, guys, change of plans,” Lydia said into the phone. “Yes. Yes that’s exactly it. We’re gonna go with the other plan, okay?”

“What’s the other plan?” Allison asked, peering over the dashboard. Would Kate have binoculars? Allison crept further down.

“To start, you and I stride into my house like we belong, because we _do_ , and second, we sneak out the back and duck into the woods behind my house, and we all cram into the Jeep. But not until Stiles calls to say they’re in place, because even with the sun up I don’t want to linger out there.”

Lydia revved the engine back to life, and Allison, fighting her instincts, pushed herself back up in the seat. The walk up the driveway was hell; it took every ounce of self-control to not glance towards Kate’s SUV. It made the hair on the back of her neck stand on end, and her teeth itch.

“We are _so_ lucky Melissa works tonight,” Lydia said, while they loitered in the kitchen.

“Your mom still on her business trip?” Allison asked, the words a little muffled by the knuckle she was worrying at.

“Mmm-hm,” Lydia sighed. “You turned your phone off, right?”

Allison nodded. One of the things they’d discussed over Skype was who could be trusted to talk to Allison’s family if they called to check in. Allison was obviously out, since she’d probably be in no state to talk to anyone once the moon rose.

Scott and Stiles were out too, since Scott tended to freeze up when lying, and while Stiles could bullshit all day long, no one ever _believed_ him. Which left Lydia. She’d left a note with her cell phone number conspicuously on the Argents’ fridge at the beginning of the semester, back when she and Allison had first started hanging out.

A few minutes later, Lydia’s phone chimed with a text, and she smiled up at Allison.

“Showtime.”

 

~

 

The last gleams of sunlight had vanished on the drive to Scott’s house. Stiles could still feel the texture of the steering wheel indented on his palms, and now he rubbed his hands nervously up and down on his jeans.

Scott went through his house, closing all the windows and curtains, while Lydia and Stiles sat with Allison in the living room. Stiles had a pair of handcuffs he’d acquired years ago in this back pocket, and was keeping up a stream of speculative chatter about what finally playing first line for a competitive game was going to be like.

Allison sat in an armchair and rubbed at her temples. She’d chewed on her knuckles on the whole drive over, and left a smear of blood on her forehead.

“We don’t really have anywhere without windows,” Scott said, walking back in to the living room. “But the one in the bathroom is really tiny, I don’t think anybody could get in or out of it. And it’s got a pretty heavy curtain.”

“Great,” Stiles said, standing up, and that was when they heard the distant howl, and the answering growl from Allison.

She was clutching at her head now, leaning so far forward in the arm chair her forehead was on her knees.

“Allison?” Scott asked, taking a step towards her. Her head snapped up, and she looked at him with glowing yellow eyes.

“You guys should really get me locked up before that happens again,” Allison said. Then the alpha howled from somewhere in the distance again, and Allison fell out of the chair, clutching harder at her skull and snarling.

Stiles darted forward, yanking the handcuffs out of his pockets. Lydia was peering out the corner of a window, holding a tire-iron she’d brought in from the trunk of her car earlier. Scott knelt down next to Allison, and put a hand on her side. She stopped writhing, and lowered her arms.

Stiles took the opportunity to grab her wrists and cuff them together behind her back.

 

~

 

Scott hung back anxiously while Stiles half-carried, half-shoved Allison up the stairs. She was growling. Lydia had gone ahead, and was holding the door to the bathroom open.

_If she gets out, someone’s going to shoot her, or worse_ , Scott reminded himself, but it didn’t help the twisting in his guts at all. Stiles dumped Allison inside and Lydia slammed the door shut. Then she jammed a chair under the door handle and stepped back warily.

When the third howl sounded, Allison snarled and flung herself against the bathroom door, making the wall rattle and the chair fall over. Lydia jumped, but resolutely reached for the chair again. Scott held up a hand to stop her and leaned against the door. It shook against his body, and he felt Stiles put a hand on his shoulder.

“Allison, Allison, come on, it’s gonna be okay,” Scott he said, shaking off Stiles’ hand. God, he wanted to be in there with her, wanted to hold her hand and be able to _promise_ that everything would be okay, instead of just _hoping_.

Allison stopped snarling, grew still.

“The full moon can’t last forever,” Scott said. “And I mean, it’s not like the alpha can howl all night, right? He’d wear his throat out. I don’t think they make cough drops for werewolves.”

Allison laughed. Then there was a fourth howl, and her laughter turned into a growl.

Scott started talking again, the first thing that came to mind, a rhyme from elementary school, and the growl wound down into a confused, canine whine. After that, Scott never shut up, even when the alpha was howling, even when Allison was howling back or snarling or growling and throwing her body against the door.

With Scott’s voice coming through the walls in lieu of a caress, Allison never grew frenzied strong enough or long enough to break out.

 

~

 

A ways down the hall, Lydia and Stiles sat, watching Scott leaning against the door, rambling about everything and nothing. Lydia was still holding her tire iron, and Stiles had brought the fire extinguisher up from the kitchen.

“What if it gets tired of waiting?” Lydia said quietly. “It’s not close by, but it’s summoning her, or trying to get her to kill us again. What if it just shows up here?”

Stiles looked down at the fire extinguisher in his arms, and then at Lydia. “How about I spray it in the face, you hit it in the knees?”

Lydia laughed, then shook her head. “I kind of wish I’d stolen more than just one bullet from Kate. Or refused to let those firefighters dispose of my Molotov.”

“Kind of ruin the whole _low profile_ thing, wouldn’t it?” Stiles said.

Lydia smiled, nodded. “Yeah. Seriously though, Stiles, if those howls get too much closer, I think we should call for back up.”

“I know,” Stiles said, and there was a long silence between them. Down the hall, Scott started singing some folk song or lullaby that Stiles couldn’t make out the words to over the growling. Stiles drummed his fingers against the fire extinguisher, and stared at the wall.

“You ever have something like that?” he asked, jerking his chin towards the bathroom.

“Like them?” Lydia asked back. Stiles saw her running her nails up and down the tire iron from the corner of his eye.

“Yeah.”

“I hope not,” Lydia said. “What they have is _terrifying_.”

“Yeah,” Stiles said, the words heavy in his mouth. “Yeah, I guess it is.”

 

~

 

The howls never got closer, and sometime past midnight they stopped entirely. After half an hour of silence, Scott made them open the bathroom door and check on Allison. She was passed out on her side, still in the handcuffs. There was dried blood around her wrists, but whatever wounds she’d given herself had healed already.

Stiles refused to un-cuff her.

“Not until the moon’s gone.”

 

~

 

By sunrise, Allison was the only one who had gotten any sleep. So when Stiles unlocked the handcuffs, Scott, well, Scott hugged her for a long moment, and then stumbled into his bed and passed out. Lydia followed Allison and Stiles downstairs and fell asleep on the couch, and Stiles fell asleep at the kitchen table while Allison was making herself breakfast. They had a few hours between sunrise and needing to get to school.

When Allison tugged back the kitchen window curtains to let in the early morning sunlight, she saw Derek Hale standing at the edge of the McCall’s yard. He gave her a nod, and she glared back, then made a get-the-fuck-over-here gesture with one arm. He raised an eyebrow, and Allison abandoned her breakfast to run out the front door.

“Were you here all night?” Allison asked, staying on the porch that ran around the McCall house to half-yell at Derek at the edge of the yard.

“Wanted to make sure you weren’t going to hurt anyone,” Derek said. Stiles had apparently been woken up by Allison running out of the kitchen, because now he stumbled out of the house and joined her on the porch. “You’re not as in-control as you should be, to deal with a full moon.”

“If you’re so concerned about keeping everyone safe from me,” Allison snapped, “then where the hell were you that night at the school? You _ditched_ us. I almost killed _everyone_.”

Derek glared. “I crawled away to heal or die in peace. I was acting on instinct.”

“Dude,” Stiles said. “You took your car with you.”

“Werewolf instincts are complex.”

Allison and Stiles both snorted, though Stiles followed it up with a yawn. Derek turned to leave, and Allison called out “Wait!”

He turned back towards the McCall house, sighing.

“I can’t keep this up much longer,” Allison said. “Fighting the alpha, keeping secrets from my family, trying not to let my grades drop. This is killing me. You’re right, about my control, about hurting someone. I need to know if there’s a way to stop this...this _thing_ the alpha does to my head.”

“He can’t control you if he’s dead,” Derek said, with a small shrug.

“Wow, like we hadn’t _already_ been considering that course of action,” Stiles said, voice dripping with sarcasm and sleep deprivation.

Derek glared at him, then nodded across the yard to Allison, who was shifting her weight nervously from foot to foot, one hand curled up against her lips.

“You can’t kill him on your own,” Derek said. “And I can’t find him without you.”

“You want us to team up,” Allison said. Derek nodded. Allison rubbed her knuckles against her teeth, not quite biting, while she thought the idea over. This was an agreement to help kill someone, to join the alpha and her aunt in the ranks of murderers.

She closed her eyes, listening to Stiles’ heartbeat next to her, and Lydia’s and Scott’s behind her in the house. She remembered moving slowly through the school, drawn to those heartbeats, anticipating sinking her teeth into her friends and ripping them apart.

_Never_ , Allison told herself. She was never going to hurt her friends like that. And she wasn’t going to spend another full moon like the one before, with the alpha tearing her control apart from the inside. She opened her eyes and looked at Derek.

“Deal.”


	13. Chapter 13

Half an hour before school Allison roused Lydia, while Stiles annoyed Scott into waking up. Stiles had statistics on driving tired being just as dangerous as driving drunk, so when they all piled into the Jeep, Allison took the wheel.  It felt weird to drive something so different from her Mazda, but she was the only one who’d gotten enough rest to be safe.

The whole Jeep reeked from everyone’s nerves the night before. Allison rolled the window down and tried not to break the speed limit.

School that Tuesday was, honestly, a blur. A blur full of rumors; two more bodies had been found in the woods the night before, covered in claw marks. Allison wondered what it said about her that she mostly felt _relief_ when she didn’t know the names. She’d felt awful about Garrison Meyers, and sad and guilty and freaked out by both the video store clerk’s death, and the janitor’s.

Maybe, if she’d been out there last night, she could have protected those two people. Distracted the alpha. Or maybe she just would’ve added to the body-count.

After school, Lydia demanded that she be dropped off at home. She didn’t want to _stay_ there by herself, she just wanted to get her car and meet them back at Scott’s. Stiles had slept through two classes, claimed to be awake enough to drive now, and shoo’d Allison out of the Jeep in Lydia’s driveway.

“You drive her, okay?” Stiles said, and Allison nodded. “I _know_ she didn’t sleep today, not even in study hall.”

Back at Scott’s house, and found that Derek had stashed his Camaro in the overgrown bushes around the edge of the McCall property. He even had a camouflage tarp for it. Derek himself, however, was not in sight.

The four teenagers stumbled upstairs to Scott’s room, and all except Allison fell asleep; she studied Economics, having gotten permission from Coach Finstock to re-take the test on Friday. As the sun was sinking down in the sky, her phone buzzed in her pocket.

“Hi, Dad,” Allison said, after flipping her phone open.

“Where are you?” Chris asked without preamble.

“I’m at Scott’s,” Allison said. Around her, the other three started to shift and awaken, roused by her voice.

“Alone?” Chris asked.

“No, Stiles and Lydia are here too,” Allison said, glancing around the room. She was propped against the head of the bed, economics textbook on her lap, and Scott leaning against her shoulder. Stiles was sprawled on the floor, left leg hiked up so his foot was resting on the end of the bed, though now he was pushing himself up. Lydia had stolen Scott’s spare bedding to make herself a nest in the corner, and had fallen asleep sitting up. She awoke the slowest, still only blinking while Scott nuzzled more firmly into Allison’s side, and Stiles was recollecting his limbs.

“We want you home in time for dinner tonight,” Chris said. “Do I need to pick you up?”

“Just a sec,” Allison said. She put her hand over the phone’s speaker. “Lydia, can you give me a ride home? Like, now?”

“Of course,” Lydia said, shaking off her lingering drowsiness and grabbing her backpack.

Allison took her hand back off the speaker. “Lydia’s giving me a lift,” she told her dad. “I’ll see you soon.”

Scott and Stiles walked the two of them to the porch, which was when a howl cut through the early evening gloom. All four of them tensed. Allison stumbled, clinging to Lydia’s hand as the familiar pull tugged at her mind. This time though, she wasn’t asleep, and the moon wasn’t full. She ground her heels into the porch, and clung tighter to Lydia.

“Allison?” Scott asked, hand reaching up for her shoulder. She grabbed Scott’s hand with her free one, and he twined their fingers together. It didn’t make the instincts urging her to chase after the alpha’s howl lessen, but it did add a level of distraction, of conflict, that kept her on the porch.

Derek was suddenly in front of them; he’d probably been lurking in the bushes around his car.

“School,” Allison said, before Derek could ask anything. “It’s pulling me towards the school. He’s gonna kill someone again.”

Derek nodded, and turned away, walking back towards the bushes.

“Whoa, whoa, hold up!” Stiles called, bounding down the porch steps to run after Derek. “Where’re _you_ going?”

“Where do you _think_?”

“You wanna bet the Argents are heading there too?” Stiles said. Derek finally spun back around to glare. “We can help,” Stiles said, gesturing to himself, and back towards the tangle of hand-holding Scott, Allison, and Lydia had formed. “I can drop you off nearby with my Jeep, while Scott drives your car around so the Argents think you’re far away. Then you can deal with the alpha without getting shot full of wolfsbane.”

“What about her?” Derek asked, jerking his chin towards Allison.

“She’s going _home_ ,” Lydia said, while Allison nodded. “Before her parents get suspicious.”

There was a second howl, and Allison flinched, digging her fingers into Scott and Lydia’s hands. “He’s not there yet,” Allison said. “But you should go _now_.”

Stiles whacked Derek on the shoulder and ran past him towards the Jeep. Derek growled, but still tossed his car keys to Scott and slouched angrily after Stiles. Scott squeezed Allison’s hand once before kissing her and letting go.

“You gonna be okay?” Lydia asked quietly, now holding Allison’s hand with both of her own, while the boys got sorted into their cars.

“I hope so.”

 

~

 

At home, Victoria gave Allison a thin story of Kate and Chris being called in unexpectedly to the police station for a consultation on a misfiring handgun. Allison made disappointed noises over them missing dinner, and fled the table as soon as it was polite.

On her way up the stairs, Stiles called.

“Is everyone okay?” Allison asked in lieu of a greeting, running the last few feet to her bedroom and closing the door behind her. “Everyone okay?”

“Well, _I’m_ fine,” Stiles said. “I just dropped Derek off a couple blocks from school and drove home. Sorry I didn’t call earlier, I’ve been listening for any news of the Camaro on my scanner.”

“…and?”

“Nothing on Scott,” Stiles said. “Sounds like the police were watching the school though, and scared Derek off. The guy’s _good_ at the whole evasive maneuver thing; lost everybody inside some warehouse. That’s all I got right now. I’ll call you if anything changes, okay?”

“Thanks,” Allison said, and hung up. She spent the rest of the evening failing to do any homework, worried about Scott. She had to throw out one math worksheet when she chewed her knuckles bloody and dripped on it.

An hour after going to bed, she got a text from Scott that said _We’re all okay._

Allison called him. “You’re really okay?” she asked in a whisper, keeping an ear out for her parents.

“Yeah, I’m great,” Scott said. “And Derek’s fine, and Stiles texted me when he got home, so I know he’s okay. And Mr. Harris is okay too.”

“Wait, what?”

“That’s who the alpha was after!” Scott said. He was keeping his voice low too, but his excitement still came through. “But since we got _Derek_ there, and the cops showed up chasing _him_ , the alpha bailed without even touching Mr. Harris.”

“How do you know all this?” Allison asked.

“Oh, I wound up in the warehouse district trying to lose your aunt, and Derek was there,” Scott explained. “Good timing, right? Anyway, it turns out Laura Hale talked to Mr. Harris, and got a sketch from him. And since I _did_ kind of save him from getting turned into a pincushion by your dad, he let me see it, and guess what?”

“Did my dad see you?” Allison asked, tensing.

“Camaro’s got tinted windows,” Scott said lightly. “Anyway, that sketch? It’s of your necklace.”

 

~

 

“Sooo, do they really match?” Stiles asked, as Scott slid the piece of paper he’d gotten out of the fracas last night sideways across the lunch table towards him. Lydia snagged it, frowned speculatively, and then dug out her make-up case. The silver pendant had been carefully tucked in to a side pocket, and she placed it on the paper next to the sketch.

“Definitely,” she said. Scott and Allison leaned across the table to look at the two items upside-down. Lydia looked up from her comparison, and they thumped back down to their seats. “Do we have any clue why Harris drew this for Laura?”

“Derek didn’t really get a chance to _ask_ anything,” Scott said.

“And now my dad’s got Harris in protective custody,” Stiles added.

“Well, maybe we can drop in some leading questions this afternoon,” Lydia said.

Stiles made a questioning noise through his mouthful of fries.

“Aunt Kate’s taking us to the mall after school today,” Allison explained. “Seems like me convincing Dad that all-girl bonding time with Lydia was good for my rabid bear trauma has given Aunt Kate an excuse to take us out for some retail therapy.”

“It’s gonna be fun,” Lydia said, flashing a smile that reminded Stiles of a coyote. “Oh, and speaking of fun, Danny’ll be stopping by your place this afternoon. You might want to give Derek a heads up to stay out of the way.”

“You talked him into tracing that text?” Stiles asked, perking up.

“ _Finally_ ,” Lydia said. “Telling him to use your one of our computers for the trace was the clincher, so we’d take the fall for hacking if we get busted, instead of him.”

“Awesome,” Stiles said.

 

~

 

The expedition to the mall went better than Lydia had expected, but wasn’t nearly as informative as she had hoped. On the plus side, no on died, no one shifted, and Allison wound up with a lot of tops that Lydia approved of, bill footed by Kate. Lydia was of the firm opinion that shopping with someone else’s money was better than spending your own.

On the down side, Lydia had been a little too busy acting _more_ like a werewolf that Allison, but not _enough_ like one for Kate to be 100% sure, to really get in any good questions about Kate Argent’s potential connection to Mr. Harris.

Kate surprised her with perfume samples, and Lydia sneezed loudly and violently, and laughed at herself, while Allison pawed at her nose. Kate dragged them towards a band playing in the food court, and Lydia complained of a headache from the noise, while Allison tried to be subtle about covering her ears.

Periodically, when Kate wasn’t looking, Allison would bury her face in Lydia’s hair and inhale, relaxing a fraction before heading into yet another store.

They had dinner at the food court, and met back up with Chris Argent in the school parking lot a little before the lacrosse game was due to start. Lydia retrieved her cheering sign from the trunk of her car while Allison caught up with Scott.

It wasn’t until they were in the stands, Lydia holding her “Go Team!” sign up while the lacrosse players chanted their pre-game rally cry, that she realized Stiles wasn’t anywhere in sight. Then she spotted Scott on his phone after the rallying cry was over, and nudged Allison.

Allison focused her attention in on Scott and his phone conversation, and Lydia realized that before getting nudged, Allison had been half-heartedly conversing with her aunt. Kate was now raising her eyebrows at their conversation getting abandoned for Allison to stare intensely at her boyfriend.

“Disgustingly in love, aren’t they?” Lydia said past Allison, grinning at Kate. “It’ll get worse once the game starts and she starts to worry about him getting clocked.”

“He is rather small,” Chris Argent said speculatively, while Kate smiled like a shark, and surveyed the rest of the team.

“He’s tough, though,” Allison said, snapping back into their conversation when Scott slid his phone into his sweater, bundled under the bench. “And he’s already had a shot from his inhaler, and he and Coach Finstock talked about strategies to minimize how much running he’ll have to do.” She put her elbow on her knee, and rested her chin on her fist, teeth starting to worry at her knuckles.

“Couldn’t they have made him the goalie?” Kate asked, and Lydia gave an un-ladylike snort.

“Danny’s the best goalie the team’s had in years,” Lydia said, nodding towards Danny as he jogged towards the net. The game would be starting soon, if he was moving into place. “It would be ridiculous for Coach to have someone else take his place for a competitive game. In practice, sure, but when we’re out for blood? It’s gotta be Danny.”

“You seem to know the team pretty well,” Kate said, smiling at Lydia. “Mind giving me a rundown of the players? I like to know who I’m cheering for, and the only one Allison’s told me about is Scott.”

“Of course,” Lydia said, tossing her hair a little, and launched into a summary of the players on the field, corresponding numbers on jerseys with names, and going over their strengths and weaknesses. It wouldn’t hurt to be honest with Kate over this; none of the lacrosse team were werewolves, none of them would get hurt from getting a little extra scrutiny.

Her voice did falter a little bit when she got to “And that’s Jackson Whittemore, the team captain.” She let herself trail off then, some melancholy showing on her face. The game had started by then, and things were getting noisier, but Lydia still heard Allison explain “He’s Lydia’s ex,” to Kate.

Kate gave Jackson an appraising look. “Oh, sweetheart, you let him _go?_ ” she said to Lydia.

Lydia gave an exaggerated sniff, and turned her head to the side for a moment, before turning back to the game. “I’m a little too busy for a boyfriend right now,” she said. She was saved from further questions, or worse, _advice_ , by Jackson scoring a goal, and the crowd cheering.

Allison took advantage of the noise to lean in to Lydia and say “Scott was on the phone with Stiles. He said to tell his dad he’d be here soon. Didn’t say why he was delayed.”

 

~

 

Stiles couldn’t tell Scott that Danny had traced the text message that sent Scott and Lydia to the school that night, that sent them to be _killed_ , back to Melissa McCall’s work computer. It just didn’t make _sense_.

And yes, they were trying to be Team Open Communication, and Team Don’t Wander Off On Your Own, but Scott wouldn’t take hearing his mom’s possible involvement well, and Lydia and Allison were stuck with mass-murdering, child-killing, burn-‘em-alive Kate Argent all day, and God knew she probably had no qualms listening in on phone conversations and reading other people’s text messages.

Stiles just had to figure this out first, and then he could tell the others in person. Melissa had probably let a co-worker use her computer, Stiles just had to ask her who. Unless someone had snuck onto the computer when Melissa was away for a moment, in which case this was another dead end.

At least he wasn’t wandering around on his own; he had Derek with him, even if Derek did have to stay in the Jeep, since being wanted for assault and kidnapping didn’t really let you have free leave to just wander into hospitals.

 

~

 

Watching Scott on the field was almost as bad as watching the lacrosse ball itself, making her itch to chase and bite, and Allison blushed when Lydia elbowed her. After that, she kept her eyes on the trees across the field, ignoring all of the running going on in her peripheral vision.

Without the game to focus on, Allison’s attention honed in on the voices near her, picking out the familiar ones, and she realized her dad and Aunt Kate were discussing which of her friends might be a werewolf.

“I told you we found an inhaler that night,” Chris said quietly to Kate. “When we saw the two betas? It’s the same medication and strength as the one Scott’s using.”

Danny blocked a shot at the goal, and whipped the ball across the field to score a point of his own, and Chris and Kate’s conversation was drowned out for a moment by the roar of the crowd around them.

“I thought it must have been Lydia,” Aunt Kate was murmuring when the noise died down. “I mean, why else would she steal one of my bullets? But you don’t have to _be_ a werewolf to _help_ a werewolf…”

“If you still thought it was Lydia,” Chris said, aggravated. “Then why did you back up Allison’s request for a sleepover the night of a _full moon_?”

“Because she wasn’t going to be at Lydia’s,” Kate said. “I can _tell_ when a girl is planning a sleepover as an excuse to sneak over to her boyfriend’s.”

The conversation was interrupted by another triumphant cheer from the crowd, and Allison clenched her fingers around the metal bench.

“Scott doesn’t make sense though,” Chris said. “Not anymore. I thought it might have been, when I found the inhaler. But the bite would have cured his asthma by now.”

“Maybe he’s faking the asthma,” Aunt Kate said. “Or it could be that friend of his. The lanky one, Stiles. Could _still_ be Lydia.”

“She was hosting a party that night,” Chris said.

“Which got canceled abruptly,” Aunt Kate said, and laughed at Chris’s face. “You really need to stop hanging out with all those old farts. Teenagers have _much_ more interesting rumor mills.”

“Allison said the party was fine,” Chris said to himself, too quietly for Kate to hear, but Allison still heard him, and her heart sped up.

“We’ll just have to keep an eye on all of them, won’t we?” Kate said. She leaned closer to Chris. “I told you Allison was a natural. She’s drawn to them, she doesn’t even know _why_. We have to tell her soon.”

“Not yet.”


	14. Chapter 14

Stiles couldn’t find Melissa McCall, and he’d been _sure_ was she was still on the night shift, that that was why she was missing Scott’s first lacrosse game. Maybe he was in the wrong branch of the hospital.

Over the phone, Derek said to look for Jennifer, the caustic nurse who’d chastised them for visiting Peter Hale so close to the end of visiting hours that one day. That was a good idea, ask Jennifer, hell ask _any other_ nurse were Melissa was, find her, talk to her, and get the hell out of this creepy-ass hospital–

The empty wheelchair and empty bed in Peter’s room really should have tipped Stiles off, he decided, as Derek’s frantic instructions to “get out of there!” sank down into the pit of his gut.

It wouldn’t have a made a difference, Stiles knew, once he looked to the side and there was Peter, very much not-in-a-coma, gently smirking. Those few seconds between seeing the empty room and Derek realizing what it meant wouldn’t have made a damn bit of difference.

It still stung though, knowing he hadn’t figured it out on his own. Especially since he was clearly about to fucking die, it really would have been nice to go out with the satisfaction of solving the mystery himself.

 

~

 

“I’ve got a bad feeling about Stiles being gone,” Allison whispered to Lydia, who didn’t take her eyes away from the game. “I think we should call him.”

Lydia frowned. “Not with your family right there,” she said.

“Can you think of any excuses for us to get out of here for a while?” Allison asked.

Lydia narrowed her eyes at the lacrosse field, and then nodded. “Wait for Jackson to score again,” she said. “Or to get body-checked.”

 

~

 

Derek had freaking _teleported_ into the hospital, Stiles was pretty sure. Teleported in to the hospital and elbowed creepy, _terrifying_ nurse Jennifer in the face, which Stiles had no objections too, except that the pool of blood around her head on the linoleum kind of freaked him out as he was trying to scramble away.

Peter claimed killing Laura had been an accident, which Derek didn’t really listen to; he’d launched over Stiles to attack Peter as soon as Laura was mentioned. Stiles could understand that; if someone had killed Scott, he’d be homicidally angry about it too.

The fight between Peter and Derek was looking pretty one-sided from Stiles’ perspective on the floor, peeking around corners. Especially since Peter just kept _talking,_ like it wasn’t even taking any fucking _effort_ to toss Derek around.

If Stiles could just find a fire-extinguisher, he could maybe surprise Peter and give himself and Derek a chance to get away. But he couldn’t _find_ one, couldn’t even see a fire-alarm to pull, if that was even a good idea. Allison hated loud noises, couldn’t do anything when the volume and pitch got past a certain level. But maybe that was a beta thing. Maybe pulling the fire-alarm would just piss an alpha off.

When Derek was crawling away on the floor, and Peter Hale was just…walking slowly towards him, that was when Stiles stopped looking around for potential weapons. That was when he realized that if Peter wanted Derek dead, then Derek would _already_ be dead.

Peter wanted Derek alive.

Stiles needed to get out of there. Needed to make it out of this hospital alive and warn Allison and Lydia and Scott that Derek’s comatose Uncle Peter wasn’t very comatose anymore. Probably hadn’t been to begin with, that day they met him. No wonder Jennifer had been so freaking scary.

 

~

 

Jackson scored again, and as the crowd cheered, Lydia burst into tears and threw her arms around Allison, sobbing into her shoulder. Allison patted her awkwardly on the back while Aunt Kate raised her eyebrows, and Chris looked uncomfortable.

“Shh, Lydia, it’s okay,” Allison said.

“I just miss him so much,” Lydia wailed into her shoulder, loud enough for Kate and Chris and probably everyone around them to hear. “I thought I could watch, I thought I could cheer on Scott and the team with you, but I just can’t! It hurts too much to watch him!”

“We don’t have to stay,” Allison said, and felt Lydia nodding against her shoulder. “We can go, we don’t have to stay.” She stood up, and Lydia stood with her.

Her dad and Aunt Kate started to stand too, but Allison waved them to sit down, while Lydia snuffled into her hair. “Please, please stay for the game. Cheer on Scott for me, okay?” Allison handed Lydia’s “Go Team!” sign to Aunt Kate. “We’ll just go cry in the girl’s room or something, you can come find us when the game’s over.”

“You sure?” Chris asked, concerned.

Allison nodded. “Gotta have somebody cheering on Scott’s first game, right?” She led Lydia out of the stands and into the part of the school that was open. As soon as they were out of sight of everyone, Lydia pulled away, dabbing at her eyes and fixing her hair, muttering that embarrassing herself like that had better be _worth it_. Allison pulled out her phone and called Stiles.

“Kind of in the middle of something here Allison,” Stiles said, when he answered. “And by something, I mean the hospital. I think all the fighting and crawling and sheer utter terror might have gotten me a little disoriented, direction-wise.”

“Why are you at the hospital?” Allison asked, getting Lydia to raise her eyebrows. “And who’s fighting?”

“Derek and his uncle,” Stiles said. “Shush for minute.”

Allison bit her tongue, holding up a hand when Lydia opened her mouth to ask what was going on.

“Aw, fuck,” Stiles said. “I don’t hear monologue-ing anymore. Which means either Peter got bored and killed Derek, or all that _oh, I didn’t **mean** to kill your sister, it was all a big wolfy misunderstanding _ bullshit might actually be working. Fuck. Fuck fuck fuck. Oh fuck they can probably hear me. Gotta go. Stay somewhere public. Bye.”

The line went dead, and Allison stared at her phone, while Lydia stared at her.

“Peter Hale’s the alpha,” Allison said, looking up from her phone. “Derek’s uncle. At least, I… _think_ that’s what all that meant. And we might need to go rescue Stiles.”

 

~

 

Lydia dug her car keys out of her coat pocket while Allison texted _Taking Lydia home, see you after the game, tell Scott why we left for me,_ to her father. When they reached the car, Lydia slid into the driver’s seat and moved to put her keys in the ignition, trusting that Allison was walking around the car to the passenger side.

Unfortunately, the front passenger seat was already occupied by Derek Hale, who grabbed Lydia’s wrist before she could reach the ignition.

She stared at him. He stared back.

“So where’s Stiles?” Lydia asked after a tense moment, tilting her head and quirking her eyebrows. “You leave him at the hospital with the alpha? Like when you left us at the school?”

“The alpha’s not at the hospital,” Derek said, and his gaze flicked out the front windshield. Lydia looked the direction Derek had, and saw a figure in a long black coat standing several empty parking spots away, talking with Allison, who was keeping a wary distance.

“So how’d he convince you?” Lydia asked, keeping her eye on Allison, and the man who must be Peter Hale, rather than looking back at Derek. His hand was still holding onto her wrist. “Last time I checked, we were helping you track him down so you could avenge your sister, not to get him a one on one convo with Allison.”

Derek didn’t answer at first. Lydia considered slamming her free hand against the horn, but decided that would probably result in a broken arm, either from Derek getting mad or just _surprised_.

“It was an accident,” Derek said eventually. “He wasn’t himself yet.”

“Keep telling yourself that.”

 

~

 

Allison was walking around the car as Lydia slid into the driver’s seat, when she heard a voice say her name, quietly, softly, just for her ears. Her head snapped up and she saw Peter Hale, no longer half-covered in burns, standing several spaces away in the parking lot.

“We really do need to talk, Allison,” Peter said, still in that same soft voice. She heard Lydia’s heartbeat spike, and then drop down to almost normal. There was a second heartbeat in the car already. Peter glanced towards it, and then back to Allison. “Your friend is perfectly safe,” Peter continued. “But I really would like to get through this conversation with as few distractions as possible.”

Allison walked past the car, stopping about ten feet away from Peter.

“The last time you and I were in this parking lot,” Allison said, trying to not grit her teeth. “My friends didn’t stay very safe.”

“I regret that,” Peter told her. She didn’t believe him; his voice was too smooth. “I’ve been acting on instinct when it comes to you, saving my lucidity for my other goals. Goals that I need your help with.”

“Your other goals have all ended in killings,” Allison said. She took a step back when he moved towards her, but he cast a heavy glance towards Lydia’s car, and she froze. “Please excuse me if I don’t want to help _you_ commit _murder_.”

Peter smiled, sighed fondly, and kept walking towards her. “Allison, my goal has never been murder.” His hand wrapped around the back of her neck. She flinched. “It’s justice.”

Claws sunk into her neck and she was on _fire_ , burning and twisting and screaming.

Fire in front of her, fire behind, her family was burning, screaming, hands reaching between bars of the basement, the basement were she used to play, she couldn’t get them out the bars wouldn’t _yield._

 She was on fire and screaming and fainting and slowly waking up in a hospital and walking through the woods towards her niece.

She couldn’t move half of her face, of her body, she couldn’t move the bars, people were laughing as they threw gasoline and she was on fire, she was on a cold bed, she was in a wheelchair, she was in a school bus ripping into the bastard that had called it an electrical accident, she was on fire, she was screaming and burning and reaching for her family’s hands.

She was in the woods killing the laughing arsonists and in a video store killing another, she was clawing at an ankle, at a face, straining to reach their hands and bend the bars and the bars wouldn’t bend, she was crying and fainting and smacking around the naïve beta that thought the bus driver was _innocent_.

She was burning and burning and _burning_.

 

~

 

Allison came back to herself soaked in sweat and shivering, strapped in to the front passenger seat of Lydia’s car. She lolled her head to the side, saw Lydia focused on the road, her knuckles white from clenching the steering wheel.

“Where’re we going?” Allison asked, wanting to say something just to confirm that she could move all the muscles on her face still.

“Your house,” Lydia said. Her voice was more clipped than usual. “I got Stiles on the phone again. He finally found his way out of the hospital. He’s going to pick Scott up from the game, which is probably out by now. I used your phone to text your dad, by the way. Said you felt tired and I was taking you home, instead of the other way around.”

“Thanks,” Allison said. She looked out the window, and then back at Lydia. “Are you okay?”

“Peachy,” Lydia said. “And furious. I had to wrangle your deadweight into the car myself, since Derek left when Peter did. And let me tell you, trying to drag a convulsing girl into your car with a bruised wrist is not the easiest thing in the world.”

“What happened to your wrist?” Allison asked, as they pulled into the driveway of her house.

“A backstabbing, uncommunicative _asshole_ happened to my wrist,” Lydia said. She got out of the car and walked around it to hold Allison’s door open for her. “I saw Peter grab your neck, and then I saw you fall to the ground, and I may have panicked. I may have attempted to claw Derek’s face off to get out of the car. But we’ll never see the fruits of my labor, as that fucking jackass heals so damn fast.”

After Lydia drove away, Allison stumbled inside and gave her mother a hug, and then fell into bed. She woke up, once, when her dad looked in to check on her.

She expected to have feverish dreams of fire, a continuation of the hectic nightmare from the parking lot. She didn’t.

Instead, her dreams were _cold_ , and she kept tripping over Laura Hale. In the woods, in the front-seat of her car, on the desk in the chemistry room. All night, she turned corners in her mind, only to find Laura Hale’s dead eyes staring at her.


	15. Chapter 15

“Your friend Lydia okay?” Chris Argent asked, when Allison wandered into the kitchen the next morning. It was a Thursday, but Chris had still gotten up early enough to make pancakes for everyone.

“I think so,” Allison said. “She tries really hard to have this…this really _together_ appearance, and I think last night was the first time she ever really let herself cry over her break up.” Allison opened the fridge and started pulling out butter and maple syrup, to let them warm up while her dad grilled the pancakes. She turned and spoke in a conspiratorial whisper. “Don’t let her know I told you that, though.”

“Secret’s safe with me,” Chris said, and flipped a pancake.

 

~

 

The first thing Lydia did when she got up in the morning was compose a text to Stiles, Scott, and Allison.

It simply said _Skype doesn’t cut it._

 

~

 

They met at Stiles’ house after school. Lydia had everyone bring all their research on werewolf lore to date with them. Stiles had stacked his on his bed, and he and Lydia had the most. Allison brought the small stack of books and print-out reports on the Beast of Gevaudan, since it was the bit of research she could do at her own house without arousing suspicion. Scott brought several pamphlets on dogs from the animal clinic, a stack of books on various canines he’d gotten from the library, and a National Geographic article on fox domestication experiments in Russia.

“You said Laura Hale looked like a real wolf, right?” Scott said, setting down his stack.

“What we could see of her,” Stiles said.

“And Peter’s a lot more wolf-y than Allison or Derek,” Scott said. “So maybe there’s something about canines that’ll help take him down. Weak points or something. Especially since we don’t have Derek helping anymore.”

Lydia nodded, and added Scott’s contribution to Stiles’ assortment on the bed.

“I wish we could just turn him in to the police,” Allison muttered into her knees.

“All of the deaths look like animal attacks,” Stiles pointed out. “And I don’t think we can get an alpha to shift in front of anyone if he doesn’t want to. Or if it’s really a good idea to let the world know about werewolves.”

“Fair enough,” Allison said. “My big question is, how does that dead deer tie into all of this? Derek said spirals mean vengeance, but what was one doing on a deer?”

“And how did Derek get that picture of it anyway?” Scott asked. “Because it sounds really familiar, and I can’t remember _why_.”

“I’m more worried what Peter’s going to do next,” Lydia said. “It sounds like he’s given up on making Allison kill us, but not like he’s given up getting her into his pack.”

“And he hasn’t finished killing other people,” Allison said. “He’s been working on a list.” She reached up into her hair, and touched the claw marks on her neck that were healing far more slowly than any other injuries she’d received since being turned.

“Do we know who’s next on the list?” Scott asked.

“Is he going to go after Mr. Harris again?” Lydia asked.

“Would we care if he did?” Stiles asked, and Lydia glared at him. “Sorry.”

Lydia had added the silver pendant from Kate Argent to their pile of research. Allison reached out and lifted it up, staring at it.

“Derek said Kate was responsible for the Hale house fire,” Allison said. “And when Peter…I got some of his memories. Just for a moment. They didn’t stay. But. Every death so far is connected to it.”

“Called it,” Stiles said, and Lydia had a small, smug smile. “Does that mean he’s saving Kate for the grand finale?” Stiles asked.

“Or he just couldn’t get to her,” Lydia said, tapping a pen against her lips speculatively. “Because she’s an Argent. She’s part of a pack. That’s why he needs help, because a single werewolf can’t get to Kate.”

“He’s got Derek now, though,” Scott pointed out. “Why does he still need Allison?”

“Last time Derek went near Kate, he almost died from that wolfsbane bullet,” Stiles said. “Not exactly a stellar resume for vengeance, there. Whereas Allison is someone Kate might be reluctant to shoot. She’d be a good distraction, or at least buy him some time.”

“That’s comforting,” Allison muttered. She held the pendant in the palm of her hand, and dangled the chain between her fingers. “He said he wasn’t committing murder,” she told them. “That what he was doing was justice.” She look up, looked around at her friends sitting in a circle on the floor of Stiles’ room.

“What if we got Kate arrested for the fire?”

 

~

 

Getting Kate arrested was everyone’s favorite plan. The problem was that “ _claw-induced visions from a vengeful werewolf_ ” probably weren’t admissible in a court of law. And besides, they had to get the police to consider it first.

“Scope things out with your dad,” Lydia told Stiles. “Maybe find out if Mr. Harris is connected to the other deaths. If we find out why he had that sketch, we can decide how to play Allison’s necklace.”

“Right away, your Majesty,” Stiles said, and gave her a salute.

“You hang on to that for now,” Lydia told Allison, who was still playing with the silver pendant. Allison fastened the chain around a belt-loop on her jeans, and tucked the pendant and excess chain into her front pocket.

“Okay, next plan,” Stiles said, because great as the get-Kate-arrested plan was, it didn’t really solve their alpha problem. “Get Kate and Peter in the same place, and take pot-shots while they’re distracted trying to kill each other. We already know she’s good at taking down werewolves, so even if he kills her first, she’ll probably at least damage him a bit, and that’ll make _our_ odds better.”

“And if she _does_ manage to kill him, we can get her arrested for _his_ murder,” Lydia said.

“I’ll need a new bow,” Allison said. She looked a little surprised at herself, for not thinking of getting one earlier.

“There’s a hunting goods store in town,” Scott said. “We could go get one.”

“Have to do it tomorrow,” Stiles said, checking his watch. “They close soon.”

“It’s that late already?” Lydia asked, confirming the time on her own cell phone, and the getting up. “Okay, everybody needs to get home before sundown.”

“Why?” Scott asked.

“Because so far we’ve only seen Peter out and about at night,” Lydia said, standing up and gathering her research. “And he’s never gone into anyone’s house. If we didn’t know already that he’s a werewolf, I’d be inclined to think he was a vampire.”

“That’s ‘cause he was _Mega Alpha by night, Coma Patient by day_ ,” Stiles pointed out. “Which he’s not anymore. The hospital’s actually reported him and Jennifer as missing persons.”

“He was also trying to pass everything off as a random animal attack back then,” Scott said. “He doesn’t really have a reason to _not_ keep pretending that.”

“And it’s easier to pass yourself off as a cougar or bear or something at night,” Allison said. “He’s probably not going to do anything supernatural in the day, when there’s more witnesses and better lighting.”

“Light which will be fading soon,” Lydia said. “So I bid you all adieu.”

 

~

 

Lydia was a few streets away from her house when her car stopped working, came to a grinding stop in the middle of the road. She killed the engine, checked her cell phone (no reception, fuck) and glanced towards the sun. It was approaching the horizon, but not so far down as to be dangerous, yet.

With a frustrated sigh, Lydia got out of her car, walked around to the front, and popped the hood. Maybe she should just walk home from here, call a tow truck from the landline at her house. But the car _was_ in the middle of the road, even if it was a _quiet_ road, and it didn’t seem safe to abandon it completely.

The popped hood must have called attention, because an SUV pulled over behind hers. Lydia sighed a little with relief; maybe they had a different cell provider, with better coverage. Or they could watch both cars while she walked home–

The driver-side door of the SUV opened, and Kate Argent stepped out.

“Hello, Lydia,” Kate said. Her smile had too many teeth to be casual. “We need to talk.”

“I’d love you,” Lydia said, putting on an equally big smile to cover the way her eyes had gone wide. “But could we call a tow-truck or get my car out of the street, first? It’s a bit of a hazard, as is.”

Kate laughed. “On a quiet little road like this? Oh, no, Lydia, we really don’t have too.” Kate was walking towards her, and Lydia made herself stay by her car, made herself keep the now slightly puzzled smile on her face.

“Well then, I guess I’m going to have to risk a traffic obstruction ticket,” Lydia said. “Because I really have to get home before my mom starts to worry.”

“She’s out of town again,” Kate said, and now Lydia did take a step back, and then a few more, putting the hood of her car between herself and Kate, while the older woman laughed. “I heard you telling Allison,” Kate explained.

“Eavesdropping isn’t very polite,” Lydia said. “And anyway, Mom’s expecting me to call. Maybe I should just do that now?” Lydia raised her cell phone, and Kate’s eyes narrowed.

“You can call her after we talk,” Kate said, and darted around the car’s hood. Lydia turned to run, but stumbled when her heel caught on the uneven pavement. Kate grabbed her shoulder and slammed her against the side of the car, then squeezed her bruised wrist until she dropped the cell phone.

“I think we’ve done enough dancing around the subject,” Kate said. She kept one arm pressed against Lydia’s collarbones.

“You’re really going to have to spell things out for me,” Lydia said, no longer smiling. “I want to be able to give a comprehensive report when I file an assault complaint with the police.”

“Cute,” Kate said. “But we both know that with everything _you’re_ mixed up in, you’re not going anywhere near the police. Not when you’ve been helping killers, Lydia. Helping wolves.”

“California doesn’t have wolves anymore,” Lydia said, pulling _bewildered_ out of her repertoire of expressions.

“Right,” Kate said, and her smile got wider. “You said to spell things out. You’ve been helping _werewolves_ , Lydia. I know you stole my bullet to help the one I shot, and I know that it wasn’t a rabid bear at the school that night. And while I’m sure you’re a wolf too, my brother thinks we should leave you alone until we’re _sure_. Though maybe not leave you alone with little Allison.”

“ _Werewolves_ ,” Lydia said, putting as much scorn into the word as she could, and raising her eyebrows. “Really?”

“I admit, _skeptical_ is a much better look on you than your usual _clueless_ ,” Kate said. “But fortunately, I don’t have to get you to admit anything to prove what you are.” The arm that wasn’t pinning Lydia down reached backwards, and Kate pulled a knife from a sheath in the back of her jeans.

Lydia screamed as loud as possible. It was a quiet road, but _someone_ had to hear her.

Kate just pushed the arm on Lydia’s collarbones up to her throat, choking out the scream and then pulling back a margin. “I just wanna see how you heal, sweetheart,” Kate said, in a fake-reassurance voice.

Lydia raised her knee as high and fast as she could, intending to bring her foot down on Kate’s instep, but a loud squeal of tires made Kate pulled back before Lydia could stomp. As the black Camaro shrieked to a stop, Kate shifted so instead of pinning Lydia with one arm, she was holding on to the front of Lydia’s shirt, twisted to the side a bit to look at the Camaro.

Lydia took advantage of the increased distance to kick Kate instead of stomping. Lydia’s heel got Kate square on the thigh, and Kate let go. As Lydia scrambled away, Kate lashed out with the knife, landing a cut on Lydia’s arm.

It was probably a very bad idea to get into a car with Derek Hale again, Lydia thought, as she flung herself towards the open passenger door of the Camaro. But it was an even worse idea to stay on the street with a Kate Argent that had a knife and a mission.


	16. Chapter 16

It had been a cute shirt, Lydia thought somewhat mournfully, as she tore the sleeves off and wrapped them around the gash on her arm. A cute, pretty, long-sleeved shirt that had ruffles around the cuffs, flaring out over her hands, to make sure no one would see the fading bruise around her wrist and ask awkward questions.

Now it was a sleeveless shirt, and a cute bandage. Lydia huffed, and debated the benefits of buckling her seatbelt in case of a crash, or keeping it off so as to facilitate getting out the Camaro quickly.

Derek took a particularly sharp turn, and after shoving herself back away from the door, Lydia fastened her seatbelt.

“Did you even _use_ a turn signal?” Lydia asked.

“Does using a turn signal when you’re trying to lose a tail seem like a good idea to you?” Derek snapped, and Lydia looked in the rearview mirror. Oh. That was Kate’s SUV behind them.

“If you screech to a halt outside the police station,” Lydia said. “I can stumble out screaming while you drive away. It’s not like she’s going to rear-end us in front of the _police station_.”

“I’m already wanted for assault,” Derek said. “Have a bleeding teenager fall out of my car doesn’t sound like a good move right now.”

“You’re also wanted for kidnapping,” Lydia pointed out. “And frankly, after that little stunt last night, I’m tempted to add another complaint to your assault charges. But right now I’m more interested in reporting _Kate_ to the police than you. She’s the one with the knife, after all.”

“Not just knives,” Derek muttered, and Lydia suppressed a shudder. She looked out the window just as Derek took another sharp turn and sped up.

“This is not the direction of the police station,” she stated.

“We’re not going to the police,” Derek said. “We’re losing Kate, and we’re going to a safe house.”

“The police could be a safe house,” Lydia said. “That’s kind of their job. Unless by _safe house_ you mean _wherever the hell Peter’s hiding out_ , which I completely object to _._ And by the way, I still don’t understand why you’re siding with him.”

“It’s–”

“If you say _complicated_ , I am going to grab the steering wheel and slam us into a building,” Lydia said.

“It’s…” Derek trailed off, and evidently decided to focus on trying to lose Kate for a while. Lydia spent the next fifteen minutes staring out the window and wondering if they were going to run out of gas or out of seemingly-deserted roads first.

“He’s family,” Derek said eventually.

“So was Laura,” Lydia snapped. “And he mauled her to death.”

“Not on purpose,” Derek said, through gritted teeth.

 

~

 

Scott knew, really he did, that Lydia was right, that everyone should get home before dark. But Allison’s parents weren’t expecting her home for a while, and she was giving Scott a lift back to his house anyway, and it had been a really stressful week.

So maybe by the time the sun went down, Scott and Allison were on Scott’s bed making out.

They were back to the petting each other’s hair and rubbing noses and giggling stage by the time Melissa McCall poked her head into the room to ask how she looked.

“You look amazing,” Allison said, after shoving herself up and bouncing off the bed.

“Amazing,” Scott echoed. “Wait, why do you look amazing?” Not that he objected to his mom looking amazing, because she was clearly happy about it, and he liked his mom being happy. It needed to happen more often.

It turned out that Melissa had a _date_ , which hadn’t happened in forever, but the doorbell rang before she was ready, and Scott and Allison tumbled down the stairs to answer it.

When Scott reached for the doorknob, though, Allison suddenly put her hand on his arm.

“What is it?” he asked, pulling his arm back and looking at her.

The bell rang again, and Melissa called “Would you _please_ get the door,” down the stairs. Scott didn’t reach out again though, because Allison was staring at the doorknob like it was venomous.

The bell rang _again_ , and Allison growled in the back of her throat. The door swung opened on its own, and there was Peter Hale, smiling at them.

 

~

 

Stiles swung around the doorframe into the kitchen a while after everyone else left, and found his dad surrounded by paperwork.  The wood of the dining table wasn’t even _visible_ , there were so many manila folders and old reports spread over it. The Sheriff didn’t appreciate Stiles sidling over and trying to read them upside down, though.

“You usually _ask_ before trying to read this stuff,” the Sheriff said, giving Stiles a sardonic look over his reading glasses.

“Must’ve got used to just sharing notes,” Stiles said dropping down into one of the other chairs. He waved one hand. “Group study and all that.”

“Doin’ that a lot lately,” the Sheriff said. He leaned back in his chair, took off his glasses. “You know, at first I thought you were just making an excuse to hang out with that Martin girl. But, uh.” He rubbed the back of his head briskly. “Then we had that parent-teacher conference, and you know what?”

Stiles raised his eyebrows, shook his head.

“It went _well_.” The Sheriff poked Stiles’ shoulder with his glasses. “You’re still not doing great on tests, but your homework’s more on topic, and all your teachers have noticed the four of you actually pay _more_ attention in class when you sit together.”

“Really?”

“Well, except your chem teacher.”

“Mr. Harris?” Stiles asked. “Yeah, he would– hey, didn’t he get attacked? You got any leads on that?”

The Sheriff put his glasses back on and waved Stiles away from the table, reaching for an evidence envelope. “Nice try, kid.”

 

~

 

So maybe trying to slam the door in Peter’s face wasn’t Allison’s most thought-out-plan ever, and maybe Scott’s threat to tell Melissa who Peter really was wasn’t the most feasible plan either.

“I’ve been in a coma for six years,” Peter told them. “Don’t you think I’d like to have dinner with a beautiful woman?”

Allison heard Melissa step into the hallway behind them for a moment, call “Just half a second, sorry!” and then dart away to look for something.

“A former coma patient asks out a nurse from the hospital he was treated at,” Allison said, before Peter could start talking again, putting scorn into her voice to cover up the trembling. “That’s really kind of cliché of you, I’m surprised you didn’t ask Jennifer instead.”

“Jennifer is no longer with us,” Peter said, and Allison and Scott both flinched. “Derek’s not really use to fighting _humans_ , you see.” He stepped over the threshold, into the house, and Allison and Scott took a step back. “We really could use your finesse, Allison.”

“Finesse at killing people,” Allison said, to clarify.

“Well, specific people,” Peter said, with a slight shrug. “You know the ones. Jennifer shouldn’t have been one of them.” He paused for a moment, and then continued. “A stronger pack makes less mistakes, Allison. Did you know, that some of the most successful military operations during the Second World War were the German U-boat attacks? Do you know what they were called?”

“The wolfpacks,” Allison said, narrowing her eyes, and Peter smiled, pleased.

“Yes,” he said. “Now, you’ve been…reluctant, to leave your old pack. What I’m proposing tonight is an _integration_. After all, I’m sure Scott here wouldn’t want to leave his mother to struggle with lycanthropy on her _own_.”

Peter reached out a hand towards Scott, towards his face, and Allison batted his hand away, growling. Peter let his hand fall back down, still smiling.

“Germany lost the war,” Scott pointed out quietly. Before Peter could reply to that, his smile finally slipping a little, Melissa appeared, ready for their date.

 

~

 

_Stall, stall, oh my god stall them_ – “Have a good time,” Scott said in a tight voice that made his mom look at him quizzically. The only real distraction he could think of was to tackle Peter, who was standing _way too close_ to Melissa, tackling him wouldn’t _end_ well. Scott felt Allison squeezing his hand so hard it was starting to tingle, and then his mom and Peter were driving away, and Allison had dropped his hand.

She’d grabbed his bike and left, actually, and Scott shook himself hard when he realized she was disappearing down the driveway, and he was still standing by the door freaking out. She must be following them. Could a werewolf on a bike keep up with a car?

“Car!” Scott yelped. They hadn’t taken Melissa’s car, _Scott_ could follow them. He yanked the car keys off their hook by the door and fished out his phone as he ran out of the house. “Pick up pick up pick up– STILES!”

“Dude Jesus _ow_ that was loud,” Stiles hissed into the phone. Scott fumbled the keys as he tried to get them into the ignition, and almost dropped his phone. “What the hell, Scott? I’m trying to get delicate info from my dad over here.”

“The alpha’s got my mom!” Scott said. “He’s taking her on a _date_ Stiles my mom is in a car with _Peter Hale_ and Allison’s following them and would you just–would you just–” The right key finally lined up correctly and slid in. Scott revved up the engine and peeled away from the house.

“Oh shit,” Stiles said, and Scott could hear crashing and a muffled “Dad I gotta give Scott a jump start, see you later,” in the background. “Where are they going? What kinda car are they in?”

“Dinner, and silver,” Scott said. He spotted muddy bikes tracks on the pavement and turned to follow them.

“That is not a lot to go on dude.”

“Well it looks like they got on to 12th street when they left my neighborhood.” Allison had ridden through a puddle before making another sharp turn, if the water splatter and tread-marks on the road were anything to go by. “And then they turned on to Carson Avenue.”

“Carson Ave…okay, there’s a couple restaurants by the bowling alley they might be going to. I’ll come round the other way, maybe we can pincer ‘em.” The sound of the Jeep kicking in to gear flooded through the cell phone connection. “We’re gonna find them, Scott.”

 

~

 

The silver car was almost out of sight, and Allison tapped into her rage, let her _fury_ at Peter for daring to threaten Melissa blossom through her veins. For the first time since being bitten, Allison let the wolf inside her come out on purpose, and used it to put on a burst of speed.

She was still a block away from their car, which was now parked on the side of the road, when Stiles’ Jeep zoomed past her and rear-ended it.

Allison backpedaled rapidly and ducked behind another car as other drivers stopped to see what had happened. She inhaled, chased away the anger and shifted back to looking fully human, and listened as Stiles and Melissa got out of their respective vehicles to talk.

“Well played, Allison,” said Peter, quietly, like he had in the school parking lot the night before, and Allison flinched, pressing closer towards the car she was crouching behind.

“You really are a clever girl,” Peter continued. “Which is funny, because I could have sworn that out of your little pack, the pretty red-head was the clever one. But I suppose being smart doesn’t always make you sensible. Still, she should have known better than to get into a car with a dangerous man like Derek… _again_.”

Allison jerked out of her crouch and grabbed for the bike while Peter kept talking. “I told you earlier I wanted to integrate our packs, Allison,” Peter said, as Allison hauled herself back onto Scott’s bike. “I’m not too particular about who I start with.” He chuckled softly to himself, and Allison raced away, chanting _Lydia, Lydia, Lydia,_ in her head, and frantically inhaling the night air in through her nose, searching for a trace of familiar perfume.

 

~

 

Stiles talked. And talked. And _talked_ , while more and more cars pulled over around them, or at least slowed down significantly while they drove past, trying to see what was going on. Any minute now there’d be police cruisers in the mix, summoned by Scott when he’d reported the accident.

Stiles just had to keep Melissa here long enough for that to happen, had to keep her from realizing they were messing up traffic, had to make sure she didn’t get _too_ fed up with him and get back in the car with Peter Hale–

Who apparently didn’t like crowds, because he suddenly leaned over to Melissa and quietly suggested rescheduling their date for some other night.

“You sure you don’t wanna exchange insurance info?” Stiles asked one more time. Peter glared. “No? Okay, your choice, that’s cool, we’re cool, everyone’s cool.”

 

~

 

“This is the most depressing hide-out ever,” Lydia declared, when they arrived at the burnt-out Hale mansion in the middle of the woods after finally losing Kate.

“Get out of the car,” Derek said, pocketing his car keys and unbuckling his seat belt.

“Are you kidding me?” Lydia said, giving him a side-eye, but still unbuckling her seatbelt as well. “Look, if you don’t want to go near the police station, _fine_ , but maybe give me your keys and I’ll go myself?”

“Letting Scott drive it was bad enough,” Derek muttered under his breath, and Lydia snorted. “If you don’t get out of the car on your own,” Derek said, “then I’m dragging you out.”

“You are _such_ an asshole,” Lydia said, but she got out of the Camaro. When Derek started walking towards the front porch of the Hale house, Lydia followed, because frankly the woods were _spooky as hell_ at night, and she’d never actually learned to hotwire a car, which meant that as long as Derek had the keys, sticking close to him was her best bet for getting out of there.

“Seriously depressing,” Lydia reiterated, once they were inside the Hale house. She sat down on the stairs, crossed her arms and glared at Derek. “Why are we _here_?”

“To wait,” Derek said, pacing a little in front of her.

“Wait for what?” Lydia asked. “And I pray to all the common sense in the world that you are not about to say ‘ _for Uncle Peter’_ because even though you’ve clearly come up with a way to work around your sister’s murder for the sake of having family again, I’d like to remind you that it was _after_ that that he _literally_ stabbed you in the back.”

“He was still running on instinct,” Derek said, though Lydia swore she heard a flicker of doubt in his voice.

“That’s your answer to everything he does, isn’t it?” Lydia said, rolling her eyes. “First it’s ‘ _he mauls my sister’_ because of werewolf instincts. Then it’s _‘he stabs me in the back’_ because of werewolf instincts. Pretty soon it’ll be _‘he rips out my guts and feeds them to me’_ because of werewolf instincts. Slippery slope, Derek, slippery slope.”

“Gotta agree with her there,” Allison said from the top of the stairs, getting Derek to stop pacing. Lydia scrambled to her feet, twisting around and grinning at Allison.

“I am _so_ glad to see you,” Lydia said, while Allison jogged down the stairs, keeping her eyes on Derek.

“I’m glad to see _you_ in one piece,” Allison said. “Let’s get out of here–”

“No one is leaving before–” Derek snapped, but cut himself off, listening to something. He turned back towards them and yelled “COVER YOUR EYES!”

Just before the flash grenade crashed through the window and exploded in light, Derek flung himself to the ground, eyes scrunched tight and hands over his face. Lydia copied him.

Allison didn’t.


	17. Chapter 17

It wasn’t supposed to go like this, Lydia though desperately, looking up from the floor to see Allison staring down at her torso in shock. They were supposed to keep the hunters away from Allison. Weren’t supposed to let a bullet lodge in her ribs, let her sink falteringly to the floor with blood burbling out between her lips.

Allison scrabbled along the floor until she hit the wall, coughing wetly and breathing in short panicked bursts, pawing at the blood welling out of her torso. Lydia crawled towards her, underneath the range of the hunters’ gunfire that was still ripping through the broken door.

“Get up!” Derek yelled at them. Lydia didn’t dignify that with a response, just kept crawling until she reached Allison, who coughed out more blood and looked at her wide-eyed.

Lydia heard Derek swear, and then suddenly he was next to them hauling them to their feet and shoving them towards the back door of the house, snarling at them to _get out_.

The girls ran, bursting through the back door and into the woods, Allison coughing even harder with the strain, splattering blood onto the forest floor. Behind them, Derek roared.

Allison stopped running only a few yards into the tree line, stumbling, pressing her hand to the smoking bullet hole. Lydia threw Allison’s arm over her shoulders, keeping her upright, and kept the both of them moving.

Soon, Lydia had both of Allison’s arms over her shoulders, her own arms wrapped around behind to keep a hold of Allison. Lydia kept putting on foot in front of the other, moving further and further away from the Hale house, while Allison’s toes dragged through the undergrowth.

 

~

 

The first sound Allison heard when she woke up was the sharp _tink_ of a bullet being dropped into a metal dish. The second thing she heard was Lydia’s voice, asking “And you’re _sure_ it’ll help her heal?”

“Trust me, I’m very sure,” said Dr. Deaton, and Allison opened her eyes, wincing at the bright surgical light above her. She felt a cloth dabbing at her ribs, and Lydia’s hand squeezing her own. She shivered slightly, and realized the only thing she was wearing up top was her sports bra.

Then Allison smelled the mass of blood next to her, and opened her eyes again, trying to sit up when she saw that most of Lydia’s shirt was soaked in red.

“I wouldn’t advise that just yet,” Dr. Deaton said, putting a hand on her shoulder to keep her on the table.

“Hey, it’s okay,” Lydia said, still holding onto her hand. “Most of this is yours.” She reached out with her other hand to stroke Allison’s hair, helping her calm back down. After a few seconds, Allison drifted off into unconsciousness again.

When she woke up the second time, the first thing Allison said was “Sorry.”

“For getting shot?” Lydia said, helping her sit up. Lydia had changed out of her bloodied, torn shirt, into a sweater that was too large for her, with the sleeves rolled up past her elbows. It was probably Dr. Deaton’s. “Damn right you are. Don’t do that again.”

“Okay,” Allison said. She shivered, and touched the bandage on her ribs in wonder.

“Here,” Lydia said, and draped a blanket over her shoulders. Then she hopped up on to the operating table to sit next to Allison, and squeezed her hand. That was when Allison noticed the bandage on her arm.

“Is that what you meant by _mostly_?” she asked, nodding towards it.

“Mm-hm,” Lydia said.

“Gonna kill Derek,” Allison muttered.

“Oh no,” Lydia said. “This was a present from Kate. Derek actually showed up in the nick of time; she wanted to confirm my lycanthropy by testing my healing speed.”

Allison was struck by an image of Lydia in a shallow grave, cut in half like Laura Hale. She shuddered.

“Why are we… _here_ , anyway?” Allison asked, wanting to think of something else.

“Because it’s near the woods and when I finally got _out_ of the trees, Dr. Deaton happened to be in the parking lot,” Lydia said. “I _was_ going to ask him to call an ambulance. But then you vomited some sort of horrible black goo over my shoulder. And Dr. Deaton _recognized_ it, and knew you were a werewolf. So, here we are.”

“Why didn’t you use your phone?” Allison asked.

“Because it’s under my car,” Lydia said with a sigh. “Unless Kate took it. And god, I probably have like fifty parking tickets by now.”

“Why didn’t you use _my_ phone?”

“Because it didn’t occur to me until it started buzzing in your pocket okay?” Lydia hissed. “And that was when Dr. Deaton was pulling _bullets_ out of you, and the noise made you twitch, and that was just–” Lydia shuddered. “Anyway, I used it to text Scott and Stiles. The incoming call was from your dad, by the way.”

“What?” Allison asked, twisting around on the table to look at Lydia.

“Yeah,” Lydia said with a dismissive shrug. “Apparently being gone _all_ night without ever checking in is cause for concern. I did actually answer the first time he called.”

“What’d you tell him?” Allison asked.

“That his sister cut up my arm and accused me of being a werewolf,” Lydia said, smirking. “I used my best incredulous tone. And I told him that we were staying somewhere safe until he put a police officer on the line to confirm that Kate had been arrested for assault.”

“…wow,” Allison said. “Did it work?”

“Not sure,” Lydia said, shrugging again. “He kept calling back, which is why I turned it off–” The bells hanging on the front door’s handle jangled, and Allison winced. Lydia glanced towards the doorway between the exam room and the front. “Odd. Dr. Deaton said he usually doesn’t open until…”

The cuts on the back of Allison’s neck flared hot and sharp, and she reflexively tightened her grip on Lydia’s hand. In the overnight rooms, the cats and dogs started to growl.

“Come out, come out, wherever you are,” Peter’s voice called, lilting and amused.

Allison jumped off the table, dropping her blanket and pulling Lydia with her towards the back door. Lydia shook her head. Her heart was racing and through their clasped hands Allison could feel her start to shake, but when she spoke, she still managed to sound _bored_.

“My, what dreadful clichés you use, Granny.”

There was a pause, and Allison could feel irritation battering her mind. With a grimace of pain, Lydia disentangled their hands. Peter spoke again, still lilting and light and soft, but a bit louder now. “You know, they say you can run _or_ hide, but you two really can’t do either.”

“Who says we were?” Lydia called back. Her heart thundered and she smelled afraid, but she ran one hand down Allison’s hair and said “Don’t worry, okay?” before stepping into the doorway and leaning against the frame, arms crossed.

“You’re not welcome here,” Lydia said, with a bright smile and steely tone. “Get out.”

“Cute,” Peter said. Even without looking around the corner, Allison could choreograph his movements by sound, heavy footsteps forward, a creak of leather as he swung his arm up, and…he stopped.

“Funny thing,” Lydia said, as hard fingernails scraped uselessly over wood. “Looks like vets don’t like rabid dogs any more than anyone else.”

Peter inhaled, angry, and Allison saw Lydia’s eyes widen. She grabbed her arm and pulled her down on top of herself a split second before a waiting room chair crashed against the doorframe.

“I will call the cops!” Lydia shrieked, voice finally matching the frantic beat of her pulse. “I will call the Sheriff himself and get every cop in the whole fucking town down here!”

“ _Really_ ,” Peter said. Allison peered out, and saw that he was standing stiff-shoulder and wide-stanced, and eyes glowing red. His gaze caught Allison’s, and he tilted his head, starting to smile. She put one hand forward on the floor, pushing herself up–

Lydia gripped her shoulders and hauled her back. “Don’t _do_ that,” Lydia hissed. “Look, he can’t get past the front desk unless Dr. Deaton or– unless Dr. Deaton lets him.”

“You could have _mentioned_ that,” Allison hissed back.

 

~

 

“Hey,” Scott said, when he took Allison’s call. His baseball bat was in his free hand, and he was sitting in the entryway of his house, watching the front door. “Lydia texted that you two were staying with my boss. Is everything all right?”

“We’re okay,” Allison said. “There’s a barrier here. Peter can’t get in.”

“Is he _there_?” Scott asked, scrambling to his feet.

“Not anymore,” Allison said. Her voice was shaky, and Scott wished he could hug her through the phone. “But I need you and Stiles to come here, okay? Apparently as long as someone with a key’s here, no one _without_ a key can get in without some kind of permission. And your boss gave Lydia one before he left, so. This is the only safe place in town.”

Scott stopped, leaned back, thumped his head on the wall. “I can’t leave my mom. And she’s exhausted, I can’t exactly wake her up and say she needs to drive me to work.”

“Then we’ll come to you,” Allison said immediately. “We need to call Stiles anyway, he can pick us up and we’ll stay at your house with you and your mom.”

“If the clinic’s the only place Peter can’t get in to, you have to stay there,” Scott said. “He’s after _you_ , Allison, you need to–”

“Scott, he almost bit Melissa last night,” Allison snapped. “We’re coming over.” She hung up.

He could hit the call-back button, and keep arguing, or call Lydia and get _her_ to keep Allison at the clinic. Scott glanced up the stairs; his mom was in her bed, sleeping in while she could. If the calendar on the fridge was up to date, she had the afternoon/evening shift later today.

Scott looked at his phone, then slid it back into his pocket, and re-adjusted his grip on the baseball bat.

He didn’t remember falling asleep there in the front hall, or even sliding down the wall to the floor. It had been a long couple of days, and he’d been up most of the night, and a seething mass of terror and determination could only keep a person awake so long.

It was the prickle of claws against his throat that woke him up. The front door was open, and Peter Hale was crouched down in front of him, smiling.

“You and I are going on a little field trip, Scott,” Peter said, while Scott suppressed the impulse to flee, because between the wall and the claws there really wasn’t anywhere he could go. Peter was tracing a figure eight on his throat. “Or do I need to go upstairs and ask your mother?”

 

~

 

“And if it’s on your way, could you see if Lydia’s phone is still in the road?” Allison asked Stiles over the phone. She glanced back at Lydia, who was curled up in a corner of the back room, getting a bit of sleep now that Allison wasn’t bleeding and Peter was _gone_. The sweater she’d borrowed from Dr. Deaton made her look tiny.

Dr. Deaton himself still wasn’t back, and Allison wished she’d been awake when he left, or that he’d told Lydia when he’d return. Without a familiar figure to soothe them, the dogs and cats in the clinic were still restless, and Allison could feel the mixture of fear and territorial rage coming off them. It was keeping her edgy.

“No problem,” Stiles said

“Thanks,” Allison said, and hung up. She draped the blanket from earlier over Lydia, and then slid down the wall to sit next to her. Allison rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms while she waited.

 

~

 

“You know,” Scott said, from the front passenger seat of Peter’s car. “You don’t need Allison to find Derek, right? You could do that howling thing you do, go somewhere with good acoustics and see if he howls back. Allison is totally not a necessary part of that plan.”

Trying to grab the steering wheel would be a bad idea, Scott told himself, remembering the attempt to slam the door in Peter’s face the night before. Any crash bad enough to take out Peter would _definitely_ kill Scott too, and if Peter _lived_ then there wasn’t a _point_.

“Unless Derek is unconscious,” Peter said. “But thank you for the advice.”

Opening the passenger door and tumbling into the road was probably also a terrible idea, no matter how many times he and Stiles had speculated about it after binging on action films. On the other hand, sticking around to see any plan of Peter’s come to fruition was the _worst_ plan.

“Dude, your howl thing has gotten Allison up in the middle of the night,” Scott said, slowly moving his hands, one towards the buckle of his seat belt, the other towards the door handle. “I seriously don’t think it’s something Derek’s gonna sleep through.” _Three, two, one_ –

Peter dropped his hand on to Scott’s shoulder. “I wouldn’t advise that.”

“Look,” Scott said, because he wasn’t going to let this awkward moment get in the way of Operation: Talk Peter Out Of His Evil Goals. “I _get_ that you need Allison to kill Kate Argent, okay? We all get that. But please. Not today. Go find Derek first, re-group, take a break. Just– just leave Allison alone for a while.”

“Scott, let me ask you something,” Peter said. “Have you ever burned yourself? Maybe on the stove, or a campfire?”

“Yeah…”

“I want you to imagine dying that way,” Peter said. “And once you’ve imagined that, I want you to imagine not _quite_ dying that way, but knowing everyone you loved _did_. Your mother. Allison. Your friends. And knowing that there would be no justice unless _you_ did something. Now, Scott, can you picture yourself with any willingness to _wait_ on that justice because your help is a little squeamish?”

“One, I’m pretty sure not wanting to kill your aunt isn’t _squeamish_ ,” Scott said. “And two, when you get your _help_ by attacking them in the middle of the woods at night and then trying to make them kill their friends, you can’t really expect them to be happy about it.”

Peter sighed.

 

~

 

Allison was up and pacing by the time she heard the car engine outside, and ran out to greet Stiles, grinning, relieved that they’d be _going_ somewhere soon, _doing_ something, instead of this hackle-raising waiting–

That wasn’t the Jeep.

That _wasn’t_ the Jeep.

The driver-side window rolled down, and she heard two heartbeats from inside the car, one calm and steady, the other fast and frantic.

“Get in the car, Allison,” Peter Hale said. Allison recoiled, bare feet scrabbling along the cold pavement of the parking lot, glancing between the clinic and the silver car. “I swear I have no further use for your boyfriend than this. Come with me, and he gets to leave.”

“Allison! Don’t do it, Allison–” Scott yelled, and then Peter grabbed the back of his head and slammed it against the dashboard.

“Get in,” Peter repeated. “Before my p **a** tience for these games runs out.”

 

~

 

Lydia was woken up by Scott frantically shaking her shoulders, too freaked out to get out coherent sentences. She got the picture pretty quickly when he held up the smashed remains of Allison’s cell phone.

 

~

 

When they reached the bluff overlooking Beacon Hills, Peter offered Allison his coat.

“I’m fine,” Allison said, arms crossed, not even trying to hide the shivers that the cold morning wind up in the hills was giving her. The car had reeked of Peter, and Scott’s fear, and stale blood from Jennifer’s corpse stored in the trunk. She’d rather stand here in the woods in nothing but her jeans and sports bra and bandage, than put on that long leather coat and let Peter’s scent envelope her further.

“All right,” Peter said. He took a step towards the bluff, and then turned back towards her. “Just in case I wasn’t clear before, Allison,” he said. “I am getting tired of chasing you down. If you leave my side before this whole endeavor is finished, I _will_ hunt down all of your friends, along with your family.”

“You’re hunting my family anyway,” Allison said, but she didn’t move to run. Peter smiled before transforming partway into his bestial form, and howled from the edge of the bluff.

The howl that came back to them a few seconds later sounded pained and broken, and as furious as she was with Derek for siding with Peter, Allison never wanted to hear him make a sound that desperate again.

 

~

 

The plan was to go back to the Hale house, to see if the hunters that had taken Derek had left any clues, maybe trails they could follow. If they could get to Derek first, let him know the information Scott had finally remembered about that deer photograph, then they could probably get Derek on their side.

And if they could get Derek on their side, they could get Allison back before Peter executed whatever plan he had to get back at Kate Argent that he so desperately needed Allison for, because none of them thought _that_ was going to end well.

…well, hopefully getting Derek on their side would help. He didn’t exactly have the best track record when it came to fighting the alpha.

So Stiles and Lydia and Scott were all piled into the Jeep, speeding towards the Beacon Hills nature preserve, when two SUV’s came up from behind, boxed the Jeep in, and forced them to stop on the side of the road.

Stiles really couldn’t say he was surprised when Chris Argent hauled him out of the driver’s seat and slammed him against the side of his way-too-abused Jeep. He _was_ angry though, angry that the two other hunters with Chris were hauling Lydia and Scott out of the Jeep too, angry that one of them ripped off Lydia’s bandage, angry that Chris was angry at _him_.

“Does that answer your question, Mr. Argent?” Stiles snapped, as the cut on Lydia’s arm started to ooze blood again from being handled so roughly. Seeing it, the hunter who’d hauled her out of the Jeep let go of her and stepped back a pace.

“Tell me it’s not Scott,” Chris Argent said roughly. “Tell me I haven’t been leaving my daughter alone with a newly-turned wolf.”

“You and I both know there’s no way Scott’s a werewolf,” Stiles said. “Guess this is it, huh? Not really the way I’d thought I’d go, execution style on the side of the road, but I guess today’s been full of disappointments for everyone.”

“We’re not going to kill you, Stiles,” Chris said. He actually moved back a little, though he kept both hands on either side of Stiles, pressed against the Jeep, keeping him boxed in. “There’s no proof that you’ve spilled human blood.”

“Pardon us for not being reassured,” Lydia said. She’d crossed her arms and had started tapping her foot; the battered heels she’d put back on before leaving the animal clinic were getting a coating of dust from the dirt road. “Between your _shoot first, ask questions later_ stunt with the arrow, and Kate’s little poison bullet, we’ve really been assuming you’re a hunt-to-kill sort of group.”

“I shoot to contain, not kill,” Chris said, finally looking away from Stiles to give Lydia a look that was almost apologetic. Almost. “As for Kate, she can be…excessive.”

“Is _excessive_ , like, French for _super-murderous_?” Scott asked. “Because I really don’t think burning down the Hale house was meant to _contain_ anybody.”

Chris took a breath in through his nose, and shook his head as he stepped back from Stiles, who took the opportunity to sidle closer to Lydia and Scott. “Hate to dispel a popular rumor, kids, but we had nothing to do with–”

“Oh, would you just _stop?_ ” Lydia said, with a disgusted expression. “You’re in denial, we get it. You’ve been in denial for six years, I bet, since you heard about the fire. Because you don’t _want_ to believe your sister would do that. The woman you probably had babysit Allison when she was little.”

“And I would _love_ ,” Lydia continued. “To let you keep living in denial. But we do not have _time_ for that, because your evil little sister has kidnapped Derek Hale, and the alpha wants him back. And guess what? Apparently he thinks it’ll be easier to make a hostage transfer than a rescue attempt, so he’s taken Allison with him as a negotiation tool.”

Stiles really should not find the sudden look of fear in Chris Argent’s face satisfying, he really shouldn’t.

“So we are trying to find Derek _first_ ,” Lydia said. “We know he was at his family’s house last night, and we were hoping to find a trace of where Kate took him out there.”

“Hudson, Laurence,” Chris Argent snapped, turning to the two other hunters. “Split up, check all the bases around town.” As Hudson and Laurence moved back to their SUVs, Chris turned towards the three teenagers.

“I’m commandeering your Jeep.”


	18. Chapter 18

The woods used to be so nice during the day, Allison thought, after Peter drove the car to a discrete distance from the Hale house and they got out and started walking. The woods _should_ have been nice today, with the winter sun shining through the canopy, the scent of all the plants settling into her skin.

But there were no recent scents of animals, no birdcalls, and Allison’s ears occasionally picked out the sound of some small mammal fleeing in the distance.

Allison was probably the only creature in the woods that _wasn’t_ running from Peter Hale.

“We had our own plan, you know,” Allison said, as they walked. “The police almost have all the pieces to pin the fire on Aunt Kate. We were gonna get them the last couple of clues. And that would be better, wouldn’t it? To have everyone know what she did? Maybe, maybe get other hunters to think twice, before they try anything? Knowing they aren’t above the law. Maybe it’ll help keep other wolves safe.”

“Your little pack continues to amuse me, Allison,” Peter said. The cold winter sunlight was gleaming on the black leather of his coat. “It’s adorable how you think this is the first time a hunter has been careless enough to get caught. But it is dangerously naïve to think one hunter being jailed would deter any of the others.”

He stopped suddenly, at the edge of the clearing around the Hale house, and grabbed Allison by the shoulder, dragged her down with him to crouch low.

“Listen,” he said. Allison closed her eyes. Out of the whole forest, all she could hear now was her own heartbeat, and Peter’s, and the sound of both their lungs.

“Underground,” Peter said, voice barely a whisper, and Allison tilted her head, aiming one ear towards the soil.

Two more heartbeats, and voices muffled by the earth.

Peter pulled Allison back up to her feet, and moved his hand from her shoulder to the back of her neck. He led her to the middle of the clearing, stopping in direct line of sight to the front door of the Hale house.

“Stay,” he said, fingers pressing against the slow-healing claw marks she bore, and Allison winced. Peter turned and walked towards the house, leaving Allison fidgeting, shifting her weight from one foot to the other, holding on to her elbows.

Peter vanished through the open door of the house, and really, this would be the perfect time to get away, to run until she hit town, until she found a phone and called someone, the police, her father, anyone–

_I will hunt down all of your friends._

Allison bit her lip and settled her feet more firmly on the ground. From inside the house came a bone-rattling roar of “ ** _ARGENT!_** ”

Allison saw a dark blur that must be Peter dash back outside, into the trees. Only a few moments later Aunt Kate burst out from inside the house with her gun already out and aimed in front of her.

She lowered it in surprised when she saw Allison, who smiled weakly and let go of one elbow to give a finger-wiggle wave.

 

~

 

For the record, Stiles did not want to let Chris Argent drive his Jeep. Also for the record, he wasn’t really given much of a choice. And Lydia refused to give up her habitual spot in the front passenger seat, which was why Stiles was now stuck in the back seat of his own car next to Scott, who was _buzzing_ , because he’d taken a couple precautionary hits from his inhaler.

 

~

 

Allison knew Peter was in the trees, knew she was being used as a distraction so he could get the drop on Kate. Knowing that didn’t stop her from yelping in surprise, and jumping, when Peter slammed into Kate, knocking the gun from her hand and sending it flying. It landed a few feet from Allison.

Then he was gone, and Kate got up, clutching her arm and looking around wildly, and Allison’s stomach knotted up. This wasn’t going to be over quickly, or cleanly.

“Allison,” Kate said, still scanning the tree line. “Bring me my gun, okay, sweetheart?”

“Why?” Allison asked, and Kate finally _looked_ at her. “So you can shoot me again?”

Kate was taking in her appearance now, eyes narrowing and then widening. Maybe this was what Peter wanted, Allison thought, maybe this was the real reason she was here, but she couldn’t find it in herself to care. Allison peeled off her bandage, licked her hand, and used the spit to wipe away the dried blood.

“There used to be a hole there,” Allison said, looking down at the massive bruise. She looked up at Kate’s face. “Who did you _think_ was in this house last night?”

“…Derek,” Kate said, starting to look sick.

“He helped me get away,” Allison said. “…more than once,” she added.

“What were you even _doing_ here?” Kate asked. She was still taking edgy glances around the edge of the clearing, but her main focus was on Allison.

“I came to get Lydia,” Allison said. That damnable tremble was back in her voice, and she rubbed at her eyes impatiently, frustrated by the hint of tears she felt. “Borrowed Scott’s bike. They’re both human, by the way.”

The hair on the back of her neck rose suddenly, and Allison thought for a moment Peter was about to burst out of the trees again, before she realized that she was hearing the sound of a car engine.

Then she heard the familiar voices _inside_ the vehicle.

“No…” she whispered to herself, in dawning horror.

 

~

 

They heard Allison shouting before they saw her, standing between the dirt road and the Hale house and trying to keep her eye on both at once. Kate was edging slowly towards her.

“You’re not supposed to be here!” Allison yelled when the Jeep came to a stop, finally spinning away from her aunt towards the road.

“Yeah, well, we are,” Stiles said, as he and Scott and Lydia scrambled out of the Jeep and clustered together.

“Kate!” Chris snapped, slamming the driver-side door shut. Kate had darted towards Allison once the teenager turned her back, diving for something on the ground. She came up holding a gun. “Put that down, Kate.” Chris had his own gun out of the holster, aimed at his sister.

“Still got an alpha problem, Chris,” Kate shouted back. She moved away from Allison, pointing the gun towards the trees.

“Dad, Dad please leave,” Allison said. She was starting to hyperventilate, and Scott ran over to her. Stiles and Lydia approached a little more slowly, but just as urgently. Stiles kept his eye on Scott and Allison, and Lydia kept her eye on Kate, who was ignoring them for the moment.

“Get in the Jeep, Allison,” Chris said, still standing by the driver-side door.

“You don’t understand,” Allison said. Not even Scott’s hand stroking her back was calming her down. “I _can’t leave_. Okay? Please, please just _go_.”

“Like hell are we leaving you alone again,” Lydia said.

A dark shape flashed past them, and suddenly Chris was on the ground. Stiles and Lydia both jumped, knocking into each other. Allison jerked away from Scott, stumbling towards her father. She pressed two fingers against Chris’s neck, and if the relieved line of her shoulders was anything to go by, he still had a pulse.

“Well, shit,” Stiles said. God _dammit_ – what was the _point_ of Chris Argent, if he couldn’t even help them with this? They’d been scared of him finding out for so long, dealing with the alpha on their _own_ because hunters were such _bad freaking news_. And now Chris was on the ground and Kate was screaming for the alpha to show himself, and they were both so God-damned _useless_.

“Did you ever find Derek?” Stiles called over to Allison.

“He’s under the house,” Allison said.

Kate Argent’s scream of furious invectives was cut off then, with the sound of gunshots and a grunt of pain. As one, the teenagers whirled around, and saw Peter Hale calmly break her arm. The gun fell to the ground.

“Yeah,” Allison sighed to herself, with a defeated tone that gave Stiles chills. “This is not going to be quick.”

Peter looked over at her, eyes barely glancing over the other teens. “No,” he said, with a languid smile. “It’s not.”

“Dude,” Stiles whispered to Scott. “Now might be a good time to–”

“Yeah,” Scott said, and they took off at a run towards the house.

 

~

 

Lydia edged over to Allison, who was now standing protectively between her fallen father and Peter, and squeezed her hand.

“Told you to leave,” Allison said, voice low and harsh to mask the tremble in her tone, but she squeezed back. She didn’t take her eyes off of Peter, who one set of claws pressed against Kate’s throat. Lydia wondered if that was to blame for the wetness in Kate’s eyes.

“Like. Hell,” Lydia said firmly.

 “Look at them, Kate,” Peter said, smiling, claws flexing. The motion sent beads of blood trickling down Kate’s throat. “Look at the girls you’ve been trying to make as damaged as yourself. Look at your niece, who knew _everything_ you did, and never ran. She’s magnificent.”

Lydia heard a sharp sniff from Allison, and glanced over. Allison’s jaw was set in a hard, furious line, and tears were racing down her face much faster than the blood down Kate’s neck.

“I’m going give you a chance, Kate,” Peter said, his smile distorting with every word, until it finally vanished entirely. “To let the damage stop here. Apologize, and I won’t make her be the one to kill you.”

He growled then, low in his throat. Allison let go of Lydia’s hand, just before her entire body shuddered, twisted, shifted. When she raised her head a moment later, Lydia saw that her eyes were glowing yellow, and locked on Kate.

Peter tightened his grip, and Kate gasped, flinching. Allison took a step forward, drew back her lips to show fang.

“Allison?” Lydia called nervously, but there was no response.

Peter stopped growling, and Allison snapped back to her human form. Lydia tried to take her hand again, and Allison shoved her away. Lydia hit the ground with an undignified grunt of pain, cheek slamming against the dirt, hand smacking into something made of metal.

“Apologize,” Peter repeated, voice rough, as though he was the one being choked instead of Kate. “For decimating my family, and leaving me burned and broken for _six years_. Apologize, for desecrating my niece’s body, and torturing my nephew. _Apologize._ ”

He didn’t pull back the claws, but his grip did slacken just the tiniest bit. Lydia kept her eyes on him while she slowly, slowly, wrapped her hand around Chris Argent’s gun. She hardly dared breathe, if Peter noticed she was _dead_ , and if Allison noticed, oh God would it even _be_ Allison noticing–

Kate laughed raspily.

“ _Nous chassons ceux qui nous chassent_.”

“We hunt those who hunt us,” Allison whispered. Peter’s hand jerked, and the droplets of blood sped up, ran together into a thickening stream.

“Family tradition,” Kate gasped out. “And I have been hunting you, haven’t I Allison? All this time, I thought I was hunting your friends, but it was you. So do it. Go ahead. _Hunt me back_.”

Lydia didn’t know what Peter might do next, if he would follow through on his threat to make Allison do the killing, or if he’d do it himself. He certainly _looked_ like he wanted to tear Kate’s throat out himself, like he wanted to sink this claws the rest of the way in and pull her apart.

Like Kate’s refusal to apologize had been a bigger insult than Laura’s desecration.

Like challenging Allison had been worse than torturing Derek.

Like he was going to rip through Kate until she was nothing but a red smear.

That was just too bad for him, Lydia thought, since she’d finally gotten her fingers positioned right on the trigger of the gun. She pushed herself up from the ground with her other hand, aiming at Peter.

The recoil really shouldn’t have surprised her so much, she thought, wondering if she’d managed to hit either of them. Then she looked up, and all she could see was teeth.

 

~

 

Underneath the Hale house was the creepiest place Scott had ever been– and he had been in _plenty_ of creepy places, thanks Stiles. The creepiest part was knowing that they wouldn’t have even found the place if Kate hadn’t left the trap door open.

The first door they found led to an empty room, and Scott didn’t bother to bite back a curse. Allison was up there facing Peter Hale and her _aunt_ with _just Lydia_ as back up, and they were stuck down here playing a shell game for some jerkbag werewolf that might not even _help_ them–

“Hey big guy!” Stiles said, throwing open the second door. He turned to grin at Scott, who shouldered past and stopped abruptly. Derek was strung up in chains and manacles, there was some weird patch of wires taped to his side. Scott’s eyes followed the wires to portable generator, and he winced.

“Keys?” Stiles queried, while Scott started pulling the wires off, because some things should just _not_ be left on.  Derek jerked his chin towards the table holding the generator, and Scott turned, then snatched up the keys. He turned back towards Derek, and started to reach for the closest manacle. Stiles smacked a hand against his chest.

“Whoa there, buddy,” Stiles said. “Not on our side yet. We got intel-sharing to do, remember?”

“Yeah, yeah, right, sorry,” Scott said, handing Stiles the keys and scrambling in his pocket. He couldn’t believe he’d almost forgotten the whole reason they’d even gone _looking_ for Derek.

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Derek snapped.

“No, you need to hear this dude,” Stiles said.

Scott unfolded the print-out of the dead deer photograph with shaking hands, and then held up to Derek. “This was why you attacked my boss, right?” Scott said. “I asked him about it today, and you weren’t the first person who had questions. Peter’s nurse came in a few months ago and asked about it too.”

Derek snarled, but Scott kept talking. “I don’t care how complicated you say werewolf instincts are, that Peter killed Laura on accident. You don’t do _this_ to a deer, and send a picture, on _instinct_. He was luring her out here. What Peter did to your sister was _murder_ , Derek.”

Silence. And then a deep, low growl that made the hair on the back of Scott’s neck stand up.

“You know, I really can’t tell if he’s growling at us or at Peter,” Stiles said speculatively, tossing the keys back and forth between his hands. “I mean, is that a _how dare you_ growl, or an _I am about to wreak vengeance_ growl?”

“The latter,” Derek said sharply. Stiles dropped the keys.

“Yeah, but, okay, are you lying so that we’ll–”

“Oh _come on_ ,” Scott said, and scooped the keys up.

 

~

 

Stiles bit back the urge to take the key away from Scott, but this was what they’d come _down_ here for, right? Right–

Once one wrist was free, Derek, used the torque to snap the other chain. Stiles flung out an arm and pushed Scott back when Derek stepped towards them. Derek and Scott both rolled their eyes.

“Can we at least get a _thank you_?” Stiles muttered. Derek took the key from Scott to unlock the manacle still around his wrist as they walked out of the room. Once in the hall, the three broke into a run, heading back for the trapdoor Scott and Stiles had come in by.

“You know, I am all for letting the Hales work out their family issues themselves,” Stiles told Scott conversationally, when Derek pushed past them to get up the ladder first. “Get Allison, get Lydia, get out.”

“Yeah,” Scott muttered, and now they’d reached the first floor of the house. Derek had already gone through the busted door to the porch, wolfing out on the way. Scott and Stiles squeezed through the doorway at the same time, stumbling onto the porch and trying to figure out where everyone was–

_Bang_.

Peter Hale threw Kate Argent to the side and moved towards Lydia in one fluid motion that probably took as long as fucking _blinking_ did. Nothing should move that fucking fast, Stiles thought, petrified.

Peter’s face was _wrong_ , not fully changed to his alpha form yet, but definitely not human anymore, red-eyed and wide-jawed.  He snapped down on Lydia’s shoulder with his _teeth_ and whipped his head to the side, sending her crashing into the wall of the Hale house.

 

~

 

 They told Allison later that she screamed, when Peter bit Lydia. That she was leaping before Lydia even hit the house. She didn’t remember that. She remembered the blood in the air, the sound Lydia had made when the teeth sunk in.

Remembering was for later, though. Right now, she was on the alpha’s back, clawing at his torso to stay on, biting her teeth into every inch she could reach, mostly the back of his neck.

There was another wolf in the fray, leaping in and striking and leaping away. She’d realize later it was Derek, that Scott and Stiles had won him back from Peter’s side.

The alpha kicked the other wolf away, and rolled on the ground, trying to squish Allison. She hung on with her claws, biting and biting and _biting_.

 

~

 

Stiles took off when Allison did, Lydia’s name tearing out of this throat like broken glass. He scrambled over the charred porch rail and hit the ground on all fours, rushing towards Lydia with more leap than run. He crumpled in on himself when he reached her, hands hovering in panic and then touching the messy wound on her shoulder. She didn’t even twitch when he touched it, and he moved his other hand to check her pulse. It existed, but her eyes weren’t opening. Pressure, they needed pressure–

He tore off both of his shirts, wadding the undershirt against her shoulder, and using the button-up flannel as a wrap.

Behind him there was snarling and growling and what was probably the sound of bones crunching. He ignored it, sliding his arms under Lydia and picking her up. Scott was there too, helping him lift Lydia. They paused when they turned around, seeing that the three werewolves were fighting in the clearing between them and the Jeep.

“We need to get Lydia out of here,” Stiles said, stumbling around the edge of the clearing towards his Jeep. He tried to give the fight a wide berth.

“We can’t leave Allison alone–” Scott started to say. Derek was flung past them at that point, and immediately leapt back into the fight.

“We can’t exactly help her either,” Stiles said, still moving. “You can stay. I’m taking Lydia to the hospital before she _dies_.”

Scott helped Stiles get Lydia fastened into the backseat, lying her on her side, and then ran back towards Chris Argent, still unconscious on the ground. Stiles turned the Jeep around and roared out of the woods.

 

~

 

Scott dragged Chris Argent as far as he could, to the edge of the clearing, and knelt down next to him. “Mr. Argent you really need to get up now,” Scott said, patting Chris’s face. “You really, really, _really_ need to get up now, please, this is kind of important.”

Derek crashed into a tree next to them. Then he just lay there coughing out blood.

“Would you just _wake up!_ ” Scott yelled, and Chris groaned and twitched a little, but didn’t come back to consciousness. Behind them, the sound of the fighting abruptly stopped.

Scott turned around, still half-crouched next to Chris. He saw Allison standing up slowly, one limb at a time, and stretch, her back to them. Her ears were pointed and her claws were out, but as she stretched they turned human again. Allison was standing over Peter Hale, who had shrunk back down to his human form.

“Allison?” Scott called, and she turned around. Half of her face was coated with blood, and it was running down her chin and onto her chest, seeping into the soft gray cotton of her sports bra. Her fingertips were bloody too, from using her claws.

Her eyes were glowing red.


	19. Chapter 19

Peter wasn’t moving anymore. That was…that was _good_ , he couldn’t hurt her friends if he wasn’t moving, right? He couldn’t– he couldn’t–

Everything _hurt_ , and she stretched, trying to chase the pain away.

“Allison?”

She turned, and there was Scott, next to her dad. She took a step towards them, and tripped over Peter’s body. By the time she got to her feet, Scott had scrambled across the clearing to her.

“Allison?” Scott repeated, holding out a tentative hand. Allison took it, and pulled him towards her. They wrapped their arms around each other, getting Scott’s shirt sticky. Allison nuzzled her face into the crook between Scott’s shoulder and neck, inhaling, trying to get his comforting scent past the overwhelming smell of blood all over her.

Scott stroked her hair.

 

~

 

Stiles didn’t tell the hospital staff what had happened to Lydia, told them he didn’t know, that he’d found her in the woods after hearing her scream. He let his words come too fast and his tongue trip over itself and alternated every sentence with “She’s gonna be okay, isn’t she? Please, someone tell me she’s gonna be okay.”

He fell into a chair once she was actually _in_ the emergency room, ignoring the concerned looking people in scrubs, and pulled out his cell phone. The fact that he was still topless, having been moving too frantically for anyone to get him into a shirt, and still had Lydia’s blood on him, probably contributed to the concerned looks.

Scott picked up on the third ring.

“Do you need me back out there?” Stiles asked, keeping his voice low. He hoped Scott said _no_ , hoped he didn’t have to leave Lydia to try and save anyone else; he didn’t know what would happen when Chris Argent woke back up, _if_ he woke back up, didn’t know if other hunters would come to the hospital once word got out that there was a new animal attack victim, one that was still alive–

“No,” Scott said. “Peter’s dead. Like, _super_ dead. Everyone else is alive. I think. Mr. Argent hasn’t woken up yet and Allison’s kind of freaking out over that.” There was a pause, and Stiles realized his leg was jerking up and down like a jackhammer. He clenched his hand around his knee, and his other leg started moving instead.

“Kate’s gone,” Scott said, sounding worried. There was another pause, and then Allison’s voice came through the phone.

“Stay with Lydia,” Allison said. “Please.” Her voice sounded thick, tired.

“Got it,” Stiles said, and Allison hung up. Stiles shoved his phone back into his pocket, and propped his elbows up on his shaking knees, biting his thumbs. A nurse tapped his shoulder then, and he looked up at her. She handed him a short hospital gown, and nodded him towards the bathroom.

When Stiles got back out, blood cleaned off and wearing the hospital gown in lieu of a shirt, his dad was waiting in the lobby.

 

~

 

Allison was kneeling on the ground next to her father, frantically trying to decide what to do. She jerked when she felt the hand on her shoulder, but it was only Derek, offering her Peter’s torn shirt. She took it, wiped the blood off her face. There wasn’t enough unsoiled fabric left to get the blood on her arms or chest. Above her, Derek sighed, and then handed her his own shirt. As soon as Allison had scrubbed the still-wet blood from her visible skin, Derek snatched his shirt back, wrapped it around the remains of Peter’s.  

“Should we call an ambulance?” Scott asked, from the other side of Chris. Allison put her hand on her father’s chest. His heartbeat was like thunder in her ears, but she wanted to feel it.

“No,” Derek said, and tossed over a set of keys, which Scott caught. “They only moved my car around back.”

Derek turned and walked towards Peter’s body, and Allison hurried to her feet and followed. She felt overwhelmed; she could still hear her father’s steady heartbeat like it was right next to her, and Scott’s and Derek’s too. The tiny winter breeze in the canopy felt like someone was rustling a paper bag over her head. She grabbed Derek’s elbow, and he stopped moving.

“What’s happening to me?” she asked, and behind her, Scott’s heart rate picked up. “I feel like a full moon– I feel like _twenty_ full moons. I can hear Kate running away, hundreds of yards from here. I can smell Scott’s medicine like he shot it in my face. And my _sight_.”

She gulped, tightening her grip on Derek’s elbow like a lifeline. “It’s gone gray, before, when, when…Stiles said my eyes were glowing. But now everything’s red around the edge. My periphery’s _gone_. Derek. What’s happening to me?”

Derek sighed, and yanked his arm away. “You killed an alpha,” he told her, still looking at his uncle’s body in front of them. “What did you _think_ would happen?”

“Oh,” Allison said. She didn’t notice sitting down on the grass, and suddenly Scott was next to her, stroking her back. “Oh.”

“What now?” Scott asked, and Allison looked at him, then up at Derek, who had hoisted Peter’s corpse over his bare shoulder.

“Now you get Argent out of here before the _police_ arrive and make this complicated, and I hide my uncle’s body before _hunters_ arrive and desecrate it.”

“Can you bury Mr. Argent’s gun too?” Scott asked. “It’s just. It’s got Lydia’s prints now.”

Derek rolled his eyes again, but nodded. Scott scrambled away from Allison and found Chris’s gun in the grass, and handed it to Derek, who slid it silently into his back pocket and began walking towards the Hale house.

“You wanna stay with your dad while I bring Derek’s car over?” Scott asked, and Allison nodded.

“There’s sunglasses in the glove-box,” Derek called out, before vanishing indoors.

Allison knelt by her father, and breathed.

 

~

 

The first thing Sheriff Stilinski said, when Stiles finally let go and stepped back from their hug, was “Hospital staff says you brought the Martin girl in. You mind telling me what happened, kiddo?”

“I heard her scream,” Stiles said, which wasn’t what he meant to say at all. He licked his lips and looked over his dad’s shoulder at the wall.

“Did you see what happened?” the Sheriff asked, and Stiles shook his head, closing his eyes.

“No, we were– we were in the woods looking for her–”

“What?”

“Didn’t anyone report her missing?” Stiles asked, finally looking at his dad. He’d forgotten to look for Lydia’s cell phone like Allison had asked, all those hours ago.

“Actually, yes,” the Sheriff said.  “Her neighbors noticed her car and cell phone in the street last night, we’ve been looking for her since, and–” his pager beeped, and he swore when he looked at it. Sheriff Stilinski pulled out his cellphone, and pointed at Stiles, then the floor. “You. Stay.”

Stiles nodded, and sank back into the plastic hospital chair while his dad walked down the hall on his phone. A second later, his own rang.

“Yo, Scott,” Stiles answered.

“Allison, actually,” Allison said. “Scott’s driving. Thought we should let you know we’re on our way with my dad, and to ask what’s happening on your end.”

“Okay,” Stiles said. He ran his hand over his head, then again. “Okay. Lydia’s getting stitched up. And someone noticed her missing last night, by the way. When my dad gets back, want me to tell him your dad noticed you were missing too, and he like, got me and Scott to help find you? It makes sense he’d call his daughter’s boyfriend if she never came home one night, right?”

“Sure,” Allison said. Her voice got a little distant then, as she relayed what Stiles had said to Scott, and then a long pause. Stiles went back to chewing on his thumb while he waited.

“Scott says you should say you found Lydia by herself,” Allison said. “That he and my dad stayed to look for me.”

“Okay.” Stiles looked around, saw his dad pocketing his phone down at the end of the hall. “Gotta go.” As his dad started to walk back down the hall towards Stiles, Lydia’s mother burst in through the hospital doors, at the same moment that the door to Lydia’s room opened. She was being moved from the ER to a quieter wing of the hospital.

Lydia’s mother crowded past the medical team as they wheeled down the hall towards the elevator, taking her daughter’s hand and demanding answers. Stiles resisted his impulse to do the same, and hung back, chasing after the gurney in fits and starts.

They couldn’t all fit in the elevator, and the Sheriff wrapped an arm around Stiles’ shoulders, holding him in the hallway as the door clicked shut on one of the nurses saying “No, it’s not an _actual_ allergic reaction, we–”

Stiles dragged his dad towards the stairs.

 

~

 

By the time Scott screeched the Camaro to a halt in the hospital parking lot, Allison’s exhaustion had overcome the new power bleeding through her pores, and her vision was back to normal. She slipped Derek’s sunglasses into the back pocket of her jeans. Her other senses were as keyed up as they had been both full moons, but not the painful levels they had been in the woods.

“Are you okay waiting here?” Scott asked, opening the front passenger door and peering down at her. Allison nodded, and closed her eyes. When she opened them again, a nurse had taken Scott’s place, and was urging Allison to look at her while a team of paramedics loaded her father onto a gurney.

A few minutes later, Allison was settled into the middle of a line of hard plastic chairs, a blanket wrapped around her shoulders, and Stiles and Scott sitting to either side. Sheriff Stilinski was kneeling in front of them.

“And then Allison’s aunt Kate cold-clocked Mr. Argent,” Scott was saying, when Allison tuned back in. “And then Derek Hale came out of like, _nowhere_ , and grabbed the gun away from her, and I guess being wanted for assault is helpful sometimes, because she totally screamed and ran off into the woods, and Derek gave us his keys to bring Mr. Argent here.”

“Is that everything, Scott?” the Sheriff asked.

“Yeah.”

“Okay.” Sheriff Stilinski pivoted on his knee a little bit, directing himself towards Allison. “Hey,” he said, voice softer than he’d used with Scott. “You with us, kiddo?”

Allison nodded, pressing her lips together. Past the Sheriff was a door, and she could smell Lydia’s perfume mixed with blood and antiseptic on the other side. She pushed down the high pitched beeping of the heart monitor to focus on the Sheriff’s words.

“You mind telling me about all that blood?” the Sheriff asked, nodding towards the bit of Allison’s sports bra visible past the blanket. “You told the nurses you weren’t hurt.”

“I did?” Allison asked. “I don’t...remember that.  I’m sorry, I don’t remember whose it is. Or what happened last night. This morning. It’s all. I’m sorry. I’m trying. I just don’t. I’m sorry.” She felt tears leak out, and rubbed at her eyes, trying to make them stop.

“It’s okay,” the Sheriff said. He sounded uncomfortable, and patted Allison on the knee. “Take your time.”

Allison nodded, and pulled the blanket tighter around herself. Scott put her arm across her shoulders and squeezed. Next to her, Stiles’ leg was jerking up and down, twice as fast as his heartbeat.

“Kate was mad about the necklace,” Allison said after a minute, and the Sheriff immediately became more alert. “I can’t remember why. I’m sorry.”

“What necklace?” the Sheriff asked.

“This one.” Allison let go the blanket to unfasten the pendant from the belt-loop of her jeans, and slip it from her pocket. “She gave it to me for my birthday, said it was a family heirloom. But it wasn’t…it’s not really my thing, and Lydia liked it, so I gave it to her.” She stopped fighting the tears, and looked at the Sheriff, clutching the pendant tight in her fist. “I don’t understand why she was so mad.”

“May I see?”

She couldn’t get the pendant away from herself fast enough, and thrust it into the Sheriff’s hands. He gave it a measuring look, and said, without looking away from it, “Allison, we need to take this as evidence.”

“I don’t want it back,” Allison said.

“Do you remember _anything_ else?”

Allison shook her head. “I’m sorry.”

Sheriff Stilinski sighed, and slowly pushed himself to his feet. “Let us know if you do, all right? And don’t let anyone put your clothes in hazardous waste disposal. Once your mother arrives with clean things, we’ll be taking that to forensics.”

“Okay,” Allison said. The Sheriff leaned down and patted her knee one more time before walking away.

 

~

 

“That was _brilliant_ ,” Stiles said, turning towards Allison once his dad was out of sight. “Seriously, that was the best performance I’ve seen since– _holy shit_.”

“Hm?” Allison said. She had her head cocked to the side, listening to something, and Stiles stared at her half-lidded, glowing red eyes.

“You’re doing that thing again,” Scott said. He reached behind her and pulled a pair of sunglasses out of her back pocket, and handed them to her, unfolded. Allison slid them on, and Stiles snapped his jaw shut.

“When did you get an upgrade?” Stiles hissed.

“You remember how Peter killed Laura to get her power?” Scott hissed back, leaning past Allison, who was still ignoring them.

“Are you saying that Allison– oh my god.” Stiles blinked slowly. Allison stretched a little, and shoved the sunglasses up unto her hair to rub her forehead, before letting them drop back down.

“Dude,” Stiles said, and she turned to look at him. “Congrats?”

“I can still taste his blood in my mouth,” Allison said distantly, and then shook her head sharply. “My dad just woke up, he asked for my mom. She should _be_ here by now.”

“Your dad did tell the other hunters to check places around town for Kate,” Stiles said. “We kind of clued him in about the Hale fire and he said Kate had ‘ _gone rogue’_ or something. Your mom’s involved already, right? Maybe she’s leading them.”

“Oh, and they think Stiles is the beta instead of Lydia,” Scott added.

Allison slowly let her head drop down into her hands and groaned.

 

~

 

After half an hour of waiting, Scott was the only one sitting still, with Allison’s hospital blanket wadded up behind his neck, trying to be a _little_ more comfortable in the hard plastic chair. Stiles was pacing back and forth between the door of Lydia’s room and the stairs at the end of the hallway. Allison had her head resting against the glass of Lydia’s window, sunglasses still on, chewing on her knuckles. The door clicked open, and she looked up while Stiles came racing back.

The doctors and nurses left first, and then Lydia’s mother. She stopped in the hallway and looked at the kids. They’d all been to her house for study sessions, but she still seemed surprised to see them here.

“Lydia’s stable,” she said. “I need to– she’s going to want some things from home. When she wakes up.” Next to her, Allison reached a hand out, but withdrew it as Lydia’s mother took in a deep breath and walked away.

The elevator was at the opposite end of the hallway from the stairs. Lydia’s mother reached it just as the door chimed and slid open. She nodded to the people stepping out; Victoria Argent, and the hunters Laurence and Hudson.

Scott pushed himself out of the plastic chair as the elevator doors closed again, taking Lydia’s mother away. Leaving Scott and his friends alone with the two men that had heard Stiles all but admit to being a werewolf.

And with the woman who would probably take that information very, very badly.

With that in mind, Scott wasn’t too surprised when Allison pushed him and Stiles behind herself, growling.

 

~

 

In the woods, the only thing disrupting the scents were time and weather. Here, in the hospital, everything was chopped up by doors, sharp corners, carried from floor to floor by machinery, and drowned in chemicals. It was a shock to have the elevator open and let out of a flood of uncontained, tightly directed bloodlust, reeking of her _mother_.

“Guess that cat’s out of the bag,” Stiles muttered, as Allison pushed him and Scott behind her. She could hear each heavy footstep the two hunters took, and Victoria’s sharp heels, but between the sunglasses and the fuzzy gray wolf-vision, she could barely see them moving. Allison shook her head rapidly until the sunglasses flew off, just in time to see Hudson reached for something in his coat. She snarled, showing fang.

 That made the three adults freeze in their tracks, confusion overriding the bloodlust.

Victoria took one step forward, and Allison snarled again. Kate had cut Lydia, Allison could smell the bruises forming on Stiles’ back and her father’s scent on his clothes, and she wasn’t willing to find out what new hurt her mother would add to that list.

“Hi Mrs. Argent,” Scott said, waving.

“Scott,” Victoria said. She, Laurence, and Hudson were perhaps twenty feet away, standing very still. “Stiles. Allison.”

“The tall one said _he_ was a werewolf,” Hudson said, turning his face towards Victoria without letting his eyes leave Allison.

“No,” Stiles said, twirling one finger in the air by his head. “I said Scott _wasn’t_. Which is true!”

“We have been hunting an alpha and two betas,” Victoria said slowly.  “Derek Hale is one of them, and now I learn _my daughter_ is the alpha that’s been killing humans?”

“Whoa whoa whoa,” Scott said, waving both hands. One hit Stiles in the ear, since the two of them were still behind Allison; she was keeping one hand on each of their chests. It felt like if she broke contact, she’d lose control.

“Allison _was_ the second beta,” Stiles said. “The alpha that bit her was Peter Hale, and he was on a killing spree in vengeance for when your sister-in-law burnt down his entire family. And Derek helped us stop him, by the way, so not only have he and Allison been totally _not_ hurting the local populace, they did your job _for_ you by killing Peter.”

There was a long pause then, and then Victoria simply said “I see.” 


	20. epilogue

Over a day had passed since Victoria Argent turned on her heel and walked away, and Lydia was still in a coma.

Stiles hadn’t slept much.

Allison and Scott had; Allison rested her cheek on Scott’s shoulder and drooled on his t-shirt, and Scott rested his head on top of hers, their hands clasped. Stiles always paced while they slept, keeping himself between them and the hunter on duty at the far end of the hallway. Victoria herself hadn’t been back, but Laurence had told Allison she wasn’t allowed to leave this wing of the hospital without one of her parents. None of them _wanted_ to leave Lydia alone, so that wasn’t really much of a restriction.

Scott made food runs for all of them, getting nurses who were friends with Melissa McCall to let him into the break room so he could heat frozen dinners up in the staff microwave, instead of using the cafeteria.

Chris Argent had told the police that he didn’t remember anything after getting to the woods, but that he wanted to know as badly as they did why his daughter had been found covered in blood; the forensics lab had discovered said blood belonged to Peter Hale, who was still officially a missing person. Chris swore to notify them _immediately_ if his sister made contact.

Late Friday afternoon the police had found Jennifer’s corpse in the trunk of her own car, some hundred yards or so from the Hale house. Saturday morning, Allison overheard the Sheriff saying that Derek Hale was no longer wanted on any charges, but _was_ considered a person of interest.

Now it was Saturday night, and Stiles was leaning face-first against the wall, blinking slowly. He didn’t hear Danny and Jackson coming down the hall, but he heard Allison and Scott get to their feet, and turned around.

They were wearing suits, Stiles noticed, and for one long moment he wondered whose funeral he’d forgotten. Then he blinked again, and remembered tonight was the Winter Formal. Jackson was holding a card, and looked wretched, staring at Lydia through the hallway window next to Stiles. Danny was holding Jackson’s car keys.

“The dance committee had a card out for everyone to sign,” Danny said. “ _Get Well Soon_ sort of thing.” He elbowed Jackson, who handed him the card without looking away from Lydia.

“It’s kind of way past visiting hours,” Scott said.

“Your mom recognized us from lacrosse,” Danny said, handing the card to him. “We don’t want to intrude. Just make sure she gets this when she wakes up.”

“We will,” Scott said.

Danny took Jackson by the elbow and led him away.

 

~

 

Lydia awoke in darkness, to the steady sound of electronic beeping. Within seconds she found herself with an armful of Allison, which wasn’t the worst way to wake up. A few seconds after that, the lights to her room flicked on, and she glanced past Allison to see Scott and Stiles leaning around the doorframe.

“Please don’t ever be a hero again,” Allison mumbled into the crook of her neck.

“Only if you promise the same,” Lydia said. She wanted to reach up and stroke Allison’s hair, but her shoulder was wrapped thickly in bandages, and her whole body felt heavy.

“The nurses are gonna be here in a sec,” Scott said, and nodded towards the monitor on the far side of the bed.

“Excellent,” Lydia said, as Allison pulled away. “I need to get out of this bed ASAP. And someone _better_ have brought some of my clothes, because there is no way I am staying in this gown longer than I have to.” Before Allison could step back from the bed, Lydia swung her right arm across and grabbed her hand.

“If we’re all here,” Lydia said. “That means Peter’s dead, right?”

“Oh, yeah,” Allison said with a grin, and her eyes flashed red. “He’s _really_ dead.”


End file.
